Black Apple

by Joan Crate

  But it wasn’t Taki’s bus, and Judith’s figure couldn’t hold her attention for long. She went back to the ladder and waited for Sister Cilla to take hold of the other side. Together they carried it to the next window.

  A window later, they heard the second bus arrive and scurried back to the low window. Looking down on the girls, Rose Marie quickly established that this wasn’t Taki’s bus either, but Sister Cilla wouldn’t budge.

  “Becky Old Bear isn’t on that bus,” Sister Cilla said. “Ager Many Guns wasn’t on the first one. What will the older girls do if they don’t come back to school, Rose Marie?”

  “Stay on the Reserve, most of them, I guess, Sister.” She really wasn’t sure. She hadn’t been to the Reserve for years. But she had heard the senior girls chatter about their plans, and often the intermediates and juniors had gossip to share. “Some might go work in the city,” she added.

  She dimly recalled her grown-up boy cousins Elias and Charles, who had left for jobs in the mines just before she was taken away to school. Soon afterwards, Auntie Constance had followed them. She hadn’t thought of those relatives in years. Was Auntie Connie still in Coulee? Had the boys married?

  “Some might get married,” she added.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of! They’re far too young for that kind of responsibility. It’s a very big decision for a young woman to make. For any woman. She has to know what she truly wants and what kind of man her husband-to-be is.” Sister reached down and placed long, warm hands on her shoulders. “Promise me you won’t do that, Rose Marie. Leave the school at fifteen or sixteen. Promise me now.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  Sister smiled. “You seem very sure of yourself.”

  “I am. It’s because I have nowhere to go. I’m stuck here.” Her words surprised her, but yes, that was it.

  Sister Cilla gave an abrupt laugh. “It’s all right. I’m stuck here too.” She paused. “You make your bed, you lie in it.”

  Moving slowly, they set the ladder beneath the last window. The sky had turned dull and gloom seeped into their limbs. Rose Marie was heavy with it, and she could tell that Sister Cilla was as well.

  “When they were done, they went downstairs to help out with the students, but Rose Marie couldn’t seem to shake the blue that had come over her, and she plodded back and forth with piles of nightdresses, towels, and face cloths, ignoring the sisters’ orders to “Hurry, hurry, hurry!” She filled and dumped basins, threw piles of severed braids into the garbage can, and guided snivelling first-year girls in and out of the bathroom, but she was doing it, Sister Joan complained, in an “irritatingly unhurried fashion!”

  “Slow as molasses in January,” Sister Margaret agreed.

  She heard girls’ voices coming from the front hallway. Within seconds, she was at the front doors under Our Lord Jesus Christ, hugging Anataki.

  “The bus kept breaking down,” Taki explained, squeezing her.

  Taki’s hands were cold, but her eyes held the light that sometimes seemed to fill her to the brim.

  “Hey, you’re taller,” Rose Marie gushed, noticing how her friend had changed over the summer. “You’re so tanned, and your hair’s sun-streaked.” As they hugged, she could feel Taki’s body—substantial, with no poking bones, and, jeez, her boobs seemed to have sprouted as well.

  “I sure missed—”

  A whack across the back of her head.

  She spun around to find Sister Joan standing over her, lips pursed. “Stop that!”

  Hugging was forbidden, as far as Sister Joan was concerned. But Rose Marie couldn’t care less what Sister Joan said or did. “The old rhymes-with-witch,” she whispered to Taki, and the two of them giggled into their hands.

  At supper she announced, “This year’ll be better,” to Anataki, Maria, Susanna, and Martha, all sitting at her end of the table. “Sister Cilla’s in charge of the dorm now. We won’t have to worry about old Sister Margaret coming up after lights-out, swinging her stick.”

  She and Taki stayed up late that night. Like several of the other intermediate and senior girls, they comforted the sobbing first-years long after lights-out, stroking their newly cut hair and reassuring them. “Everything will be fine in the morning. Don’t worry, your mama and papa will come visit before you know it.”

  “Lies,” she told Taki, who nodded vigorously. “But what else can we say?”

  “It won’t do them any good to cry their heads off all night long, scared half to death,” Taki reasoned.

  Once the last little girl had whimpered herself to sleep, Rose Marie and Anataki stuffed their pillows under the covers of their beds and tiptoed to the bathroom. Inside, Taki snatched Rose Marie’s hand.

  “I got something to tell you, Rose Marie, since you’re my very best friend in the whole world.”

  “What?”

  “Oh-kioysi,” she said. “My moon cycle started over the summer.”

  “What do you mean, your ‘moon cycle’?”

  Taki didn’t answer. As she turned her chin to the door, she looked grown up. And smart, like she knew things. That old burning sensation in her belly again. She wondered if Taki was growing up faster than she was, growing away from her—if she wouldn’t want to be her friend anymore. And if she ever lost Taki . . .

  “Mama told me about it. It’s like when a girl gets old enough, and one day she’ll get married and she’ll be able to have babies because when she was younger, like we are now, her body got ready for it by building a nest for the baby to grow in like when she’s with her husband, you know”—Taki, grinning broadly, reached over and slapped her on the upper arm—“with her husband.”

  “What?”

  “You know, kyak.”

  But Rose Marie didn’t know the word. Not anymore.

  “You know!” Taki insisted, rolling her eyes. She pressed the palm of one hand against the tops of the fingers of the other and pushed back and forth with a springing motion. “Getting a baby.”

  For a moment, Rose Marie felt completely stupid. Then, “Oh.” The ritual of strut and pose, chase and flee, offer and accept. She had seen it with elk, deer, and even frogs around her home so long ago. Had heard it with Mama and Papa a few times when she had woken in the night. The first part of the dance with Aunt Angelique and Forest Fox Crown down in the bush behind the house one time they stayed with them. That had made her laugh out loud from her hiding place in the willows, and hearing her, Forest Fox Crown got real mad and shouted, “Get lost, pokaitapi!”—scaring her silly.

  Now she thought of the shadow sister with her snaky hips.

  “And when a woman’s not, you know, like going to have a baby,” Anataki continued, “the baby-nest all comes out, like in blood between her legs, when the moon is in the right phase, at least the right phase for her, because it’s different for each one of us, and that’s why it’s called your moon cycle.”

  Rose Marie didn’t know what to say.

  “And when you have your monthlies,” Anataki continued, “it cleanses you and puts you in harmony with the world. That’s why women can’t do sweats or ceremonies four days before and four days after the blood cleansing. We’re way too powerful, can make others sick, even.” She grinned. “Now we can make new life. Powerful,” she said, striking her chest with a fist, her voice thick with pride. “We’re powerful, Rosie!”

  “But—but the blood,” Rose Marie stuttered. “It’s like a bad thing.” She was confused. “You know how the seniors always hide their cotton pads under towels when they go to the bathroom so no one can see, and how they all keep it secret. And what about the time I heard Bertha say, ‘I have the sickness today,’ like she hated it or was kind of ashamed or mad even?”

  “Yeah, I know, but really, it’s a good thing, Rosie. My mama told me.”

  She felt the last trace of her blue slip away. Maybe it wouldn’t be gone for long, and maybe Taki was wrong that the blood was a good, a cleansing thing, but she felt happy just the same. She grabbed Taki’
s hand.

  “Me too.” She laughed. “I got my moon too.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Rose Marie,” Anataki said, frowning and folding her mouth into Sister Joan’s expression of disdain, “you are becoming a young lady, and it’s about time you acted like one!”

  Snickering, they fell against each other.

  Oh, it was so good to have Taki back.

  24

  Iikss-tah-pik-ssi-wa

  ANATAKI HAD IT every September—nausea and vomiting caused by the residential school food. By October, she usually had recovered and was once again accustomed to the meals, though thinner. Even though Sister Margaret did little in the way of cooking, for some reason, she took Anataki’s reaction personally every single year.

  Rose Marie, returning from Mother Grace’s office after her first advanced catechism class of the new school year, heard Sister Margaret declare from the sisters’ dining room, “Good gracious, it’s not our fault. Whatever they give that poor Anne at home—dog eyes or gopher brains, I can just imagine—it’s turned the child right off the sensible food we serve here at the school.”

  Sister Marg, tub of lard, Rose Marie thought to herself. The “sensible” food Sister was praising was what Taki called makapii, really bad. Once Taki had even called it tistaan, poop, then made a barfing noise that almost made her really, truly barf. Rose Marie scurried to the kitchen to join her class for what Sister Bernadette called “cooking lessons” and the girls called “making everyone’s damn lunch.”

  This year, her seventh at the school, Anataki’s illness lasted not much more than a week, yet she had very little appetite throughout September, and by the end of the month it seemed to Rose Marie that her friend had lost all the weight she had gained over the summer. Once again, her eyes looked too large for her face, and her hair, chopped short by Sister Joan, hung limp at her ears.

  “I’m sort of tired, Rosie,” she told her the first week of October, when Sister Cilla took a group of them east to the frozen-over marsh to skate and slide. “Not puky sick. Just yucky.”

  After the tramp across the prairie through a skiff of snow, Anataki could barely catch her breath, and when they started Crack the Whip, a game she loved, she coughed so hard she collapsed on the ice.

  “Anne, that’s a terrible cough,” Sister Cilla scolded, peering down at her. “I daresay you need a day or two of rest in the infirmary. Lots of liquids.” She fixed Rose Marie in her gaze. “And no visitors sneaking in, keeping you awake.”

  Anataki shook her head. “No, I’m fine, Sister Cilla. Just a frog in my throat.”

  * * *

  A few days later, her cough was even louder and lasted longer, her cheeks were flushed, and as she tried to get out of bed in the morning, she staggered and fell to the floor.

  Rose Marie rushed over. “Hey, you okay?” Crouching beside Anataki on the cold floor, she laid her hand on her forehead. “Holy moly, are you ever hot! Is she ever hot, Sister!”

  “Rose Marie,” Sister Cilla said quietly, “help Anne into the infirmary. I’ll be there as soon as I get the morning shift moving.” She clapped her hands. “Those on kitchen duty should be downstairs by now. Let’s go, girls!”

  Even though her face burned, Taki whimpered that she was “freezing.” Rose Marie fetched the blanket from her bed and took it to her friend. Holy mackerel, as she tucked it under Taki’s chin, she noticed how dull her eyes were.

  “Get better,” she whispered, grazing Taki’s cheek with her chin.

  “Make sure you come visit me, eh, no matter what Sister Cilla says.” Taki’s eyes fluttered closed. “Promise, Rosie?”

  “I promise.”

  * * *

  At noon, Rose Marie glimpsed Sisters Cilla and Margaret in the sisters’ dining room, so she dashed up the stairs to the top floor. When she stepped into the infirmary, she saw that Taki was perfectly still. The door clicked shut behind her, and suddenly the heap of bedclothes shook, and Taki shrieked, “Get out of here!”

  The words slapped Rose Marie in the face. You get out of here, she was about to yell back. I waited for you all summer, and now you don’t want me? You can get the hell out of here and stay away from me! But then Taki turned and squinted through the darkness.

  “Rosie? Thank goodness it’s you. Come here!”

  As Rose Marie neared the bed, Anataki reached out, grabbed her hand, and clung. “I think it was her,” she choked out, shuddering. “That one you told me about, sta-ao naatowa-paakii.”

  “What?”

  “You know, that ghost nun. I woke up and there she was. Oh, Rosie! Then she just like, jeez, disappeared! Please, get me out of here!” She coughed until her eyes ran.

  So Taki had seen her too. And Taki believed her, had always believed her. “But Sister Cilla will kill us,” she hissed back. “She doesn’t want you to have visitors even.”

  “I don’t care. Please, Rosie,” Taki begged, squeezing her hand.

  “She goes in the dorm, anyway, that shadow sister. You’d see her there. She won’t hurt you, you know.”

  Shivering, Taki closed her eyes, tears welling behind her lashes. “Then you have to stay with me, Rose Marie!”

  “I will.”

  She sniffed the chicken broth on the night table. Sister Cilla must have brought it up, but it didn’t smell right, and she didn’t want Taki drinking it, not with her stomach. She carried it into the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet, then poured Anataki a glass of water.

  “Drink it,” she ordered when she returned, snatching a pillow from the next bed. Setting it by Taki’s head, she took off her shoes and climbed in beside her. The heat from Taki’s body burned right through her uniform. “Now go to sleep.” She curled against Taki’s back. “Snug as a bug in a rug,” Sister Cilla sometimes said to the first-year girls. She closed her eyes and drifted.

  A warm wind rippled the horse’s mane, its broad back swaying beneath them. She tightened her grip on Taki’s waist. Everything was warm: the horse, the breeze licking her hair, and Taki’s tummy beneath her sweaty palms. They were headed for the border. In another day, they would see Taki’s family’s camp and the great ii-nii grazing in the distance.

  * * *

  The following day and the day after, other girls came down sick: three first-years, two juniors, and stupid Bertha Bright Eye, now a senior. There were only six beds in the infirmary, so Anataki took the opportunity to tell Sister Cilla she was feeling better. “Let a little one have my bed. I can go back in the dorm.”

  “Oh dear.” Sister Cilla looked pained.

  “You look good, Anne,” Rose Marie said. “She looks almost better, Sister.”

  “All right, then.”

  “I hate that hospital room,” Taki whispered to Rose Marie as they rushed back to the dorm. “I’m glad I never saw her again, that shadow sister, and I was always scared she’d come back, but I think I saw someone else, someone worser! Listen, this morning while the other sick ones were sleeping, this man, this—”

  The entrance door swung open and the first-year girls spilled into the dormitory. Rose Marie, not wanting to be sent to the kitchen for washup duty, dropped to the floor, crawled to her wardrobe, pried the door open, and hid inside, oh, forever it seemed, all cramped up, while Sister Cilla got the little ones washed up and in bed.

  Taki didn’t have a chance to tell her what she had seen, and later, cranky after her long wait in the wardrobe, Rose Marie didn’t ask.

  25

  A Burning Bush

  NOT TWO HOURS from St. Mark’s, fires burned beneath the soil. Every once in a while, someone reported seeing flames that reached up from the very bowels of the earth.

  “Overactive imaginations” was what Mother Grace had put the stories down to when she first arrived in the region decades before. Fanciful tales dreamed up by some drunk stumbling home three sheets to the wind or an Indian recalling a heathen tale. Perhaps the fancies of a bored farmwife or the delusions of an ov
erzealous Presbyterian. But the stories had persisted—a new sighting every few years.

  Then word came down in a letter to Father David from the Anglican priest of the Sarcee—a Dene tribe near Calgary—of a bush bursting into flame.

  “Hear this, Sisters,” Father David cried in his trembly voice as he shuffled into the dining room at suppertime. In a scrawny hand, he had a letter, which he held up not an inch from his milky eyes. “Something out of the ordinary has occurred five miles east of the Reserve here. Two of my parishioners, both solid Christians, witnessed a bush bursting into flame on the prairie. Let me assure you, no cause was apparent. There have been no lightning strikes recently, only cool, clear weather. I myself witnessed the bush burnt to a black stump, while no other vegetation was affected, save a patch of weeds at its base.”

  “Father Winston thinks it’s a sign from God. What do all you holy women think?” Father David demanded, squinting around at them.

  “Heavens,” Sister Bernadette said, dropping her fork. “It must be a sign from God!”

  “Not coal burning under the surface?” Father David demanded, once again revealing his perverse nature.

  “And the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush,” Father William cut in just as Mother Grace was contemplating the same verse.

  “Yes, Father William. The Lord or the Devil.” Father David smirked, enjoying himself. “As you know, the Devil often mimics God.”

  Sister Joan huffed, Sister Margaret snorted, but other than that, no one responded. Father David, clearly disappointed at not being able to spark an argument, speared a pork chop onto a plate, snapped it up, and shuffled back upstairs to his suite. He ate in his room most of the time these days. No great loss, was Mother Grace’s opinion. The man did nothing more than give Mass once a day and attempt to provoke the sisters. And Mass was becoming more abbreviated by the week.

  “It’s God,” Sister Cilla said as soon as Father David had left. All the sisters nodded in agreement.