by Joan Crate
“Rose Marie, what is it?” Mother Grace asked at breakfast when she saw the girl squirming in her damp dress and stuffed underwear.
“Nothing, Mother Grace.”
“All right, but sit still, chérie. The first thing I’ll have you do this morning is go up to the dormitory and see if last night’s wind blew things around. You know how Sister Cilla opens all the windows at the end of the school year to freshen the dorm.” She smiled indulgently at Sister Cilla, sitting farther down the table and a million miles away.
“What? Beg your pardon, Mother Grace,” Sister Cilla stuttered.
“Just give it a sweep, chérie,” Mother Grace told her, ignoring Sister, who was already returning to her own bewildered world.
Back in the dorm, Rose Marie felt a prick of curiosity. She walked over to one of the senior girls’ wardrobes. Even standing on tiptoes, she could not see the top shelf, had to reach in with her hand and feel around. There. She brought out two—those cotton rectangles the older girls were always sewing in domestic science classes from laundered flour bags and worn bedding. She had never known what they were for, and like the other girls her age, she knew better than to ask. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” they always said. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.” She turned the pad over, examined its brown stains, the thick, layered construction and hurried stitching. Right there in one corner, she spotted the number of the girl it belonged to, sewn in red thread.
Over the years she had seen bigger girls wrap these cotton rectangles in their towels or clothing, trying to hide them as they hurried to the bathroom. She remembered Maria Running Deer crying that spring, and her older cousin, Judith, throwing an arm around her shoulders, whispering, then taking Maria to her wardrobe and reaching up to the top shelf.
Maybe she wasn’t hurt or sick. Maybe these cotton rectangles had to do with the “fall of Eve” and “God’s punishment” that Sister Joan often mentioned but never fully explained. “The temptress,” Father David had called Eve more than once during Mass. Maybe her bleeding was a sign of woman’s sin, of shame, something not to be spoken of, to be hidden away and suffered through silently. After she finished sweeping the dormitory, she would go quietly downstairs, slip into the sewing room, and make her own cotton pads.
18
A Very Good Age
MOTHER GRACE ROSE from the table, leaving her dishes for Sister Cilla to take to the kitchen. With her cane in one hand, it was too difficult to carry a bowl, cup, saucer, and cutlery. A few weeks back, she had broken an entire place setting.
Breakfasts were the worst, her joints still locked in a stiff repose, unwilling to flex and bend. She had to rely on Sister Cilla more these days, but that was as it should be. In fact, she really had to introduce Priscilla to the administration of the school. She had plans for her, plans that would keep Sister Joan far away from a position of power at St. Mark’s.
“Could you stop by my office this morning, Sister Cilla,” she called out. “There’s something I need to discuss with you.”
Sister Cilla straightened. “My! Yes, of course, Mother Grace,” she said, cheeks flushing.
Just what was wrong with Sister Cilla these days? she wondered as she made her way to her office. She had seen her going in and out of chapel on a few occasions. To pray, no doubt, but for what? Mother Grace was checking her calendar when she heard a tentative rap at her door.
“Come in.”
Her eyes a little wild, Sister Cilla sat down.
“You don’t seem yourself, Sister.”
“Dear, oh law.” She pushed the door shut with one long foot. “I’m sorry. There will be no more of that, Mother Grace, I promise. I haven’t broken my vows or anything, but—” A sob escaped her mouth. “Oh, Mother Grace, I have a sinful nature!”
“Don’t we all, Sister Cilla. Now, what in heaven’s name are you referring to?”
“Dear . . .” Sister Cilla closed her mouth. When she opened it again, she seemed more composed. “Well then, it’s my birthday, I suppose. You see, Mother Grace, this Thursday I’ll be thirty.”
“A very good age.”
“But you see, Mother Grace, at thirty, I thought I’d be . . .” Her voice trailed off, and her eyes had that wild look again.
“Yes?”
“I guess thirty isn’t that old, but, you know, when I joined the Sisters of Brotherly Love, it was just after . . . I don’t know if you remember, but I had been engaged to be married.”
“I do recall, Sister. The young man in question betrayed you.”
“Yes.” She blushed. “Well, after all that, I didn’t know what to do. I decided to enter the sisterhood, but I wasn’t exactly sure. I didn’t really hear a calling, you know?”
“Calling is just a word, Sister.”
“Well, yes. But I wasn’t sure, Mother Grace.”
“Are you now?”
“Uh, maybe.” Her eyes darted from the cross above the door to the bookcase. “I don’t think that’s it.”
Time for patience and empathy. Mother Grace softened her expression and leaned across her desk. Patting Sister Cilla’s hand, she asked, “What do you think is the source of your confusion?”
“Kids,” she blurted. “Children. I always wanted them. I thought I would have them.”
“That desire is fulfilled at St. Mark’s, is it not? Here you have children, dozens of them, children whose lives you influence and enrich in the name of the Lord.”
“Thanks be to God,” Sister Cilla intoned faintly.
“We all have our moments of doubt, Sister Priscilla. It’s important that you came to me.” The fact that she had bidden Sister Cilla, that Cilla had not come of her own accord, was a mere technicality, she decided. “Ours is a life of sacrifice and devotion, oui, but also one of self-examination and prayer.”
“Yes, Reverend Mother. I have been praying. I’ve been praying all the time.” Sister Cilla paused, glancing at her lap. When she looked back at Mother Grace, she seemed calmer. Their conversation turned to other things—linen counts and the number of nightdresses needing mending or replacement.
“Do you have time for the garden in addition to the dormitory preparations, Sister?”
“Absolutely. In fact, it does me good to be outside. I think I need some time away from—” She stopped.
“Sister Margaret?”
“Dear, oh law. We don’t always see eye to eye. I try, Mother Grace. I really do. It’s just that—she’s, um, a little bit cranky sometimes and—”
Mother Grace raised a hand to silence her. “I believe a young strong woman such as you needs more physical work and less time fussing over dormitory maintenance.” And listening to the complaints of the increasingly crotchety Sister Margaret, she thought to herself, la vieille mappe. As if Margaret were the only one who suffered. “Perhaps you’d like to work with Sister Bernadette over the summer?”
“Yes, Mother Grace, I would.”
“I’m going to assign you to help in the garden, in the kitchen, and with food acquisition over the summer.”
Sister Cilla flushed with pleasure, and when she left, her steps down the hall sounded lighter. Even if it had been a quick decision, it was a sound one. Sister Lucy, who usually assisted Sister Bernadette during the summer, was becoming more of a hindrance than a help. Getting deafer by the day. And, Mother Grace was beginning to realize, blinder. Why Sister Lucy refused to go east to the perfectly nice retirement home in Montreal was beyond her comprehension. Of course, Lucy couldn’t speak much French. But then, most of the sisters from the west couldn’t, and there would surely be at least one or two of them at the home. Sister Lucy would have company. Then again, they’d all have to holler in order for her to know they were there.
Vieilli, with her new assignment, Sister Cilla would not have time to learn how to keep the books, the main reason she had asked her to the office in the first place. Well, there was no rush. Cilla had lots of time to learn administration—years, in fact. She, herself, was no
t going anywhere.
* * *
As far as Mother Grace could tell in the following weeks, Sister Cilla’s new assignment was working well. Though broomstick thin, Priscilla was strong as an ox and ten times as fast. Brother Abe appreciated being called on less for lifting and carrying; that was plain as the nose on his face. But Mother Grace wasn’t going to let him get away scot-free.
“When are you planning to start the repairs, goodness, so long overdue, Brother Abraham?” she demanded at breakfast the next day.
He looked a little dismayed, but nodded nevertheless. “I’ll get on them real soon.”
When Olaf dropped by that afternoon to do the meat cutting, she seized the opportunity to employ him as well. The man was obviously lonely or he would be cutting the meat at his farm.
“Mr. Johanson,” she called as he pulled out a set of battered knives. “If you’re not terribly busy with your pigs, perhaps you could help Brother Abraham with some very necessary repairs to our school.”
His face actually lit up. “Yah. I can do that.”
“Bless you,” she allowed.
Sister Cilla, though busy, was cheerful once again, at times to the point of giddiness. Was there no happy medium? The young nun seemed to have an excess of energy, despite her late-night forays to chapel. She was constantly running out to the garden, down the basement steps to the cold room, or out the front door to greet the farmers with their deliveries, often with poor Sister Bernadette struggling on her short legs to keep up.
Things would be back to normal once the students returned. Then Sister Bernadette could explore new ways to ruin perfectly good food, and Sister Cilla would be back to the dormitory listening to Sister Margaret’s litany of complaints and very likely becoming discontented once again. An endless cycle, spinning them all into old age. I am weary of my life. Genesis. She sat at her desk and pulled out a sheet of paper and a bottle of ink.
Dear Patrick,
I received your awaited letter three days ago. May God bless and keep you.
Our summer is half over, but instead of appreciating each day, I find I am already anxious about the return of autumn. What is the matter with me that I cannot enjoy the moment without regretting its future?
I have just spoken to the young sister I have put much stock in, Priscilla. Her warm heart and concern for the children in her charge were a welcome relief in the penury of the war years. Even with the war over, praise God, the sisters at St. Mark’s are sometimes poor of spirit. Sister Cilla has always been an exception. Yet now, despite her exuberance, something is off-kilter. I have plans for her in the running of the school, as you know, and I pray for the insight and wisdom to guide her appropriately.
Great is the mystery of Godliness: I have told myself that for years, and yet now the phrase no longer comforts me. What am I missing? What besides my life is slipping away?
How I miss you, Patrick.
Yours in Christ,
Grace
19
Heat
DESPITE AUGUST’S HEAT and Papa’s Sunday visits, blue still crept up on Rose Marie. It clutched her and hung on, sometimes for days at a time. Rose Marie felt as if she were carrying a deadweight, someone dead who could not be thrown off. Like that stupid shadow nun. Could she, should she tell Mother Grace about the shadow sister and the shadow students she sometimes saw? Alone in her bed at night, she thought she could, believed she must. Or else go completely crazy. And possibly to hell.
But the next morning, it didn’t seem right. There was Mother Grace’s reserve, the reserve of all the sisters, except Sister Cilla, and every now and then Sister Bernadette. It was as if there were unwritten, unspoken rules among the sisters about sharing secrets the way friends did, the way Mama and Auntie Constance and Auntie Angelique had, the way she and Taki did—a kind of formality, stiff as their wimple bands. No, she could not tell Mother Grace or any of the sisters about the ghosts.
* * *
Again, a week later, blood seeped onto her sheets, and flowed for five days. Unexpectedly, tears pressed against her eyes, ready to spill. Mother Mary, she prayed to the picture on her small bedroom wall, help me. But the Virgin was shocked by the appearance of the Holy Ghost, and just like Sister Cilla, was preoccupied, of no help at all.
Washing her face before bed, she peered at herself in the bathroom mirror. Was she pretty? Some of the girls were. Judith Shot One Side, for example. And Maria Running Deer. Holy moly, and Judith’s boobs—her cousin Rachel’s too! She surveyed her own chest in the mirror, turning from side to side. Both Judith and Rachel had arrived at school the previous September with two brassieres each, but by the time they left for the summer, they were spilling out of them. “They got four boobies,” Taki had whispered. “Two little ones pushed up on top of two big ones.” They had jumped up and down, chortling, happy to get back, even secretly, at the smug relatives who frequently referred to her chest and Taki’s as “raisins on a breadboard.”
She squinted at the mirror. She wished her skin was lighter—gold, not copper. But not sunburnt or freckly like the sisters’. Or with those thin red lines that ran across Sister Lucy’s cheeks, cracks in a china cup. She pulled up her bangs and examined the bumps on her forehead. “Pimples,” some of the girls called them. Maria, always trying to be ladylike, said, “I wish I didn’t have these blemishes.” La-di-dah.
Watching her reflection in the series of small mirrors hung over the sinks, she walked the length of the bathroom, swaying from side to side just like Adele Fox Crown and her friends, chest pushed forward, hips weaving. “Fancy wiggle-walk,” Anataki called it, exaggerating the motion, limp-wristed, lips pouting, making everyone laugh. And yet it felt good; it made her think about dancing in the arms of a handsome man, like the one she’d glimpsed in Maria’s magazine. She glanced around, but no one was there to see her, not even the shadow sister.
That night she wanted dreams, lazy ones of her once-upon-a-time trees and creek, the beaver she had seen one time with Papa, pushing her baby upstream with her nose. Close your eyes, Sinopaki, Mama whispered, and she settled under her sheet.
Land burst open. Her legs stretched around a warm, broad back. Pounding hooves, a blur of yellow grass whizzing by, and sunlight, thick as honey, pouring down her back as her horse raced over the prairies. Ahead, two young men rode painted horses, their black hair flying, bare chests slick with sweat. One slowed and turned his horse to face her, his grin red and white and wild, eyes spilling mischief. He stretched a muscular arm towards her. Her horse slowed and sauntered over to his, nuzzling its neck. He reached across his saddle and drew her to him. He held her and his sweat dripped down her breastbone, down her belly, down between her thighs, their bodies bannock-wrapped around a willow branch . . .
A bell clanged. “Time to get up!” Sister Joan yelled from the hall.
Pulling the blanket snugly to her chin, she curled around the moment still singing in her skin. In her nightdress, the shadow sister leaned against the opposite wall, her eyes lazy, her hand falling to her breast. She cupped the flesh, squeezing the tip. Rose Marie felt fingers on her own nipple, a tickle. A spurt of warmth ran down from her stomach, then the static shock of sock feet rubbed along carpet. In her ears, the whimper of an injured animal.
“Rose Marie, is that you in there?” Sister Joan demanded from the hall.
“I just have a charley horse, Sister.” It was all she could think of.
“Well, get dressed. Snip, snap.” The shadow sister melted like candy, but Rose Marie stayed in bed until it drizzled away—her beautiful, sinful dream. Then she pulled on her uniform and ran down for Matins.
20
Juggling
IN THE KITCHEN, Rose Marie took the cup from Sister Bernadette, dried it, and handed it to Sister Cilla, who placed it on the counter with three other cups.
“Watch this,” Sister Cilla said. Rapidly, one after the other, she threw the cups in the air.
Rose Marie gasped, just as Sister Bernadette pulle
d her hands from the dishwater, demanding, “What are you doing, Sister?”
“Juggling. You’re juggling!” Rose Marie cried.
With the cups flying through the air, Sister Cilla kicked out her feet in an awkward dance, black skirt flapping.
Rose Marie giggled. “Sister Joan would have a fit if she saw you!”
Sister Cilla blew a raspberry, Rose Marie guffawed, and Sister Bernadette clapped her hands. Face flushed, legs kicking, cups soaring, Sister Cilla kept spinning around, catching and throwing.
As Rose Marie hooted and joined Sister Bernadette in clapping, Sister Cilla’s dance grew wilder, more energetic, cups flying overhead like dizzy doves. The three of them were suddenly caught up, a procession of chaos whirling through the kitchen. Sister Cilla jumped, then lunged again and again, her hands a blur. Around the butcher block all three of them turned and swooped, their whoops rising and falling with the cups.
Off balance, Sister Cilla missed a cup. With a loud crack, it hit the floor. The handle hurtled across the room, and Sister Bernadette shrieked. Laughing so hard she could hardly stay upright, Sister Cilla managed to jerk to the left, plucking the next cup from the air. As Rose Marie and Sister Bernadette clapped, another cup hit Sister Cilla’s knuckle, and she yelped. The cup flew to the counter, smashing on the edge, and white porcelain ricocheted around the kitchen. The three of them doubled over, gasping for air.
“What’s going on in there?” Sister Joan’s voice called from the other side of the kitchen door.
All three froze.
“I said, ‘What’s going on?’ ”
“Nothing to worry about,” Sister Bernadette called.
“Didn’t sound like nothing to me!”
