by Joan Crate
Taki came to her. She smiled, sun glowing through her skin, her brimming spirit flowing. Behind her, the ii-nii grazed and faded into night.
* * *
The release started with Rose Marie’s fingers. The top joint curled. Then the second joint. Her fingers folded into her palms. She could wiggle her wrists and turn her forearms. She struggled against the stone until it freed her shoulders, her back, vertebra by vertebra, her hips. Then her legs, ankles, and feet. The slate around her face cracked, and she opened her eyes. She was in the dormitory, and it was empty.
She would do one last thing for her friend.
Stiffly, she climbed out of bed and tottered to the bathroom. The stone in her belly was shattering, water rushing through, a hot river. She sat on the toilet and pissed while the world trembled and slowly began to turn again. She pissed forever, it seemed.
One foot in her stocking. The next foot. Pull them up, over her knees, her thighs. Dress over her head. Arms in. Shoes on. Walk. Then run to the chapel.
“For the repose of the soul of Anne Two Persons, we ask you,” Father William sang, stretching one hand out to the congregation.
“Lord, hear our prayer,” the first-years, the juniors, the intermediates, the senior girls, Brother Abraham, Mother Grace, and all the sisters chorused. Rose Marie joined them.
* * *
The next morning, Rose Marie got up with other students and went downstairs to the dining hall. She stood in line for breakfast and sat where she always did, the space beside her, Taki’s seat, empty.
“Heartsick,” Mama had said when she told her the story of Auntie Constance, how she hurt and moaned, clutching her sides, and Father Alphonses had to drive her to the hospital in Fort Macleod so she wouldn’t die.
The problem was a baby growing in the wrong place. “The doctors gutted Connie like a fish, took everything out,” Mama said. “No more babies. She was heartsick.”
Rose Marie felt like she had been gutted. She was heartsick too.
A hand on her shoulder. Turning, she saw Sister Cilla gazing down at her. “How’s Rose Marie?”
She couldn’t speak.
After roll call, Sister Joan ordered the class to the sewing room. The girls stood up, filed through the door and down the hall. Rose Marie’s body moved with them. Air leaked into her lungs, seeped back out. In, out. One foot, two feet. As she neared the front entrance, two people pushed through the door, cold spilling in behind them.
Anataki’s parents. She knew them from her dreams. Someone must have told them. She heard Sister Joan walking behind her, so she turned the corner and pressed herself up against the wall.
“May I help you?” Sister Joan demanded, her words breaking from the stale biscuit of her voice.
“We’ve come for our girl’s body,” Taki’s father said.
So they weren’t going to let her be buried out back with the others, the dead ones whose names were forgotten as soon as they were in the ground with a wooden cross planted by Brother Abe. A cross that got buried by snow and splintered by drought, that fell apart and blew away. But if they took Taki’s body, she wouldn’t be able to sneak out to her grave. She wouldn’t ever be able to visit her.
“Yes, the Two Persons.” Sister Joan’s voice softened in pretend sympathy. “Come with me.” She started off towards Mother Grace’s office.
As Taki’s mama took a step forward, her eyes found Rose Marie flattened against the wall. For a fraction of a second, they traded looks like arrows, each shuddering into the other’s heart with piercing pain. Then Rose Marie slipped down the wall and crumpled on the floor.
27
Mould and Charcoal
AT MEALTIME, SITTING at the table she had once shared with Taki, Rose Marie tried to eat. Porridge, bread, peanut butter, mashed potatoes—everything stuck to the roof of her mouth and wouldn’t go down. In class, her mind floated and refused to light on any of the lessons. Her eyes stung, full of grit.
“Rose Marie, stop daydreaming!” Sister Joan yelled. “Wake up. Snip, snap.”
At night, she tossed and turned.
“Rose Marie, I’m going to speak to Sister Cilla about putting you to bed at the same time as the first-years, since you’re so dozy.”
When all the girls were asleep, the shadow sister slunk through the dormitory, and behind her crept a shadow man. Goose pimples and ice danced up and down Rose Marie’s arms. She pulled the covers over her head, squeezed her eyes shut, and bit her lip to stop from crying or screaming or jumping up and running for the door. Slowly, she climbed out of bed and crept over to the empty bed where Anataki used to sleep. No one had removed the sheets, so she slid inside Taki’s smell of sweat and sick. As she closed her eyes, she finally felt the grey river of sleep lap the shore of her body. She tried to plunge in, to sink to the bottom, but the river withdrew, and she was left awake and aching. She tasted blood on her lip and sucked, trying to shift the pain from her head and guts and bones to that one small cut. No dreams. No Taki.
* * *
In class, her eyes watered. She yawned.
Sister Joan smacked her across the head with the rolled-up student roster. “What’s wrong with you? I asked you a question, missy!”
In advanced catechism, Mother Grace told her about the imperfect sacrifices of the Old Testament and God’s desire for one clean sacrifice to be offered throughout the world. Rose Marie wriggled.
“Have you no respect for what our Lord endured?” Mother Grace demanded.
“I’m sorry.” Her eyes filled.
“Anne is now with God, dear child.” Mother Grace’s papery hand folded over hers. “Pray for her soul. You can do no more.” She straightened in her chair. “I don’t think either of our hearts is in the lesson today. Va t’en, and take the Bible with you. Read the book of Malachias for your next lesson. God willing, it will put you to sleep.”
* * *
That night, Rose Marie watched the stocky man break from the darkness and trail the shadow sister. As he crept by her bed, his odour of mould and charcoal made her stomach lurch. She pulled a blanket over her nose but could not shut her eyes or look away. He wore black with a white stripe at his throat. A priest’s collar.
His meaty hand leapt to the sister’s shoulder, and turning, she gasped. His hand moved to her neck, and a ray of moonlight from one of the high windows caught a ring on his finger—gold, engraved with an X—making it flare. The sister opened her mouth to scream, but his thumb pressed her throat and only a gurgle spilled out. His other hand fumbled with her long skirt. Her fingers tore at his wrist. He pushed her hard, and she crashed into the wall.
“Stop!” Rose Marie cried. She shoved her fist in her mouth as the two fell against each other and plummeted to the floor, the sister flailing under the thump of his body, the priest grunting. She would suck her fist down her throat. She would suffocate.
A flash of metal. It was the kind of knife Sisters Joan and Lucy used for cutting out paper crosses, stars, and lambs to tape on classroom windows. Rose Marie saw it clearly, pulled from the sister’s skirt pocket and clutched in her hand. She saw the blade tear into the priest’s face, heard him bellow.
Lights flashed on, then off again. Abby First Eagle snorted, and a mattress creaked. Someone came through the entrance and strode towards her. The angel of death. I pray the Lord my soul to take.
“Rose Marie, is that you? Are you awake?” Sister Cilla bent over her bed. “What was that noise? Are you crying?”
Wiping her nose with the back of her hand, Rose Marie couldn’t stop the flood of tears and snot and sobs. Sister Cilla stroked her shoulder. Two rows ahead, Abby was making piggy snorts.
“It’s Anne, isn’t it, Rose Marie? You miss her.”
She shook her head. “No, that’s not it.” Then she nodded, choking. “It is, but it’s so much more!” Everything was terrible, the school, the whole, wide world. Sobs shook her body. The more she tried to stop, the harder she cried.
Sister Cilla’s hand patte
d her back. “There, there,” she comforted, now drawing circles as she made soft, reassuring sounds. Just like Mama used to do.
One of the junior girls sat up, said, “Oh,” and sank back to sleep.
As her sobs subsided, Rose Marie was overcome by embarrassment. “I’m sorry, Sister,” she muttered. As she looked up at Sister Cilla, she noticed her nightcap was askew.
“Sister,” she whispered. “Your hair. It’s almost long.”
28
The Confessional
ROSE MARIE SAT in Mother Grace’s office. They were about to start her catechism lesson when Father Alphonses knocked on the door. Mother Grace struggled to her feet.
“I’ll be right with you, Father.” Turning to Rose Marie, she told her to read ahead. “I won’t be long.”
Rose Marie pushed her chair closer to Mother Grace’s desk and leaned heavily on her elbows. She knew Mother Grace would pester Father Alphonses with a million questions, as usual. “What’s new in the parish, Father? Tell me everything. Did you bring a newspaper?”
Rose Marie pressed her palms to each side of her head, trying to squeeze out the ache and grief and ghosts. All morning in class, she had worked hard to concentrate.
“I see you’re with us today,” Sister Joan had announced. “How nice.”
She picked up A Child’s First Confession: Its Fruitful Practice, but the book slipped from her fingers and tumbled back on Mother Grace’s desk, pages splayed. Folding her arms on the top of the desk, she laid her heavy head on it. She had been nine at the time of her first confession, she recalled.
* * *
“Remember when I put a tack on Sister Joan’s chair?” Beth had asked as they huddled around her in the dorm just before lights-out.
“Yeah, Sister never even noticed,” Taki quipped.
“So much the better,” Beth retorted. “I never got caught and I’ve got something to confess now.”
“Eww, that’s good!” Martha Buffalo squealed. “Should I confess stealing food?”
“No, stealing breaks one of the Ten Commandments,” Beth warned. “A mortal sin. Sister Joan will make you pray on your knees down the whole chapel aisle. Probably the Commandments to copy out too. Unless you can get Rose Marie to write them for you.” Beth had glanced over at her, sniggering.
Rose Marie retaliated. “As everyone knows, E-liz-a-beth”—she pronounced the name just as Sister Joan did when she was mad—“the priest can’t tell the nuns what you confess. Only God.”
Just then, Sister Margaret snapped out a warning and switched off the lights. Lying awake in her bed while the other girls, one by one, stopped whispering and fell asleep, Rose Marie decided to take her first confession—her reconciliation with God, Sister Joan had told them in class—seriously. She was fed up with being awake at night with no company but ghosts no one else ever saw. She would tell Father David what she had never told anyone but Anataki.
Next morning, inside the confessional it was dark, almost as dark as the dormitory at night. The prayer bench was low, and she had to raise her head to speak through the screen. They had practised what to do in Sister Joan’s religion class, and Sister Cilla had gone over the procedure with all the girls in third year for a few nights just before bed, but still, she felt small and bewildered.
“Good afternoon, my child,” Father David greeted her, but no light flooded down from heaven, no flame ignited her heart, no wings of deliverance had lifted her spirit.
“Have faith in the Lord, my child.”
“Amen.”
“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.”
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” she muttered. “This is my first confession, and I’m not sure if God is really here.”
She had been so ignorant.
“The Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.”
“I confess to Almighty God and you, Father, that I hate those people at night!”
“Speak up!”
She raised her voice only slightly, afraid the other girls waiting their turn outside the confessional would hear her secret. “Father, something happens at night, things I see, things that no one else knows about.”
“What is it you see?”
She leaned on her elbows to raise herself closer to the screen so Father David would hear. “They come out of the shadows. They walk all around the dormitory. That nun, a young one who isn’t even here in the day. She talks to me.”
“A nun?”
“Sick girls too.” She stopped. She thought she heard something—a scoff in Father David’s voice—and she wondered if he believed her. She wanted him to lift the edge of her fear, to pull it from her with his old fingers, then explain it, pray it away.
“Dead ones,” she said. “Lydia, Ruth, Maryanne. I see them when they leave. But mostly, it’s just the nun.” Her voice became a whisper, but Father David, his ear pressed to the screen, didn’t ask her to speak up again. He didn’t speak at all.
“Child,” he said finally, “I believe you’re dreaming. May the Almighty God have mercy on you, forgive you your sins, and lead you to Eternal Life. Amen. May the Almighty and Merciful Lord grant you pardon, absolution, and remission of your sins. Amen. May our Lord . . .” He went on forever before muttering the words she expected to hear: “I absolve you of your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”
She would never confess to seeing shadow people again. He thought she was dreaming.
* * *
Now she raised her head and stared at the books on the desktop, Mother Grace’s chair, the cross over the door, disoriented by all the years that had passed at the school. But one thing she knew for certain: she couldn’t stand it, couldn’t stand them anymore. The ghosts. She shoved A Child’s First Confession, and it thudded to the floor. Hearing Mother Grace’s footsteps coming down the hall, she quickly retrieved it.
“Rose Marie!” Mother Grace exclaimed as she entered, as if she was surprised to see her. One of her hands was locked around a newspaper, and her tongue flicked nervously over her bottom lip. She looked different, older than ever. “We’ll have to leave things for today.” She dropped the newspaper on her desk. “Mon Dieu, Mon Dieu.”
* * *
On Saturday, Rose Marie went to confession even though she didn’t want to. She tripped through a list of dumb venial sins but didn’t say anything about the shadow people. Father William probably wouldn’t believe her any more than Father David had. “Dreams,” she was almost certain he would mutter through the confessional screen. Or “lies.” “Say the rosary. In the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.” Blah, blah, blah. If only she could dream. Taki had taken her beautiful summer dreams with her.
* * *
On Monday afternoon during free time, she walked around the school grounds with Susanna Big Snake and Maria Running Deer, listening to them chatter about some singer named Elvis Presley.
“I think he’s part Indian,” Maria said. “You can tell.”
Susanna nodded. “What a dreamboat!”
Blah, blah, blah.
She knocked on Mother Grace’s office door. “Do you think I could attend evening Compline with the sisters like I do in the summer?” Perhaps if she were around the sisters more often, the ghosts would stay away.
Mother Grace examined her closely. “All right.”
That evening she went to chapel with the nuns. After prayers, as the sisters rose to file out, she followed at a distance. Before she reached the font of holy water by the door, the new nun, Sister Simon, who was now the youngest, younger than Sister Cilla, turned off the lights.
Rose Marie made the mistake of looking back at the altar.
Moonlight drifted through the stained glass and revealed the thick outline of the ghost priest as he dropped to his knees before the crucifix.
“Loathe,” Sister Joan had pronounced that day in class, drawing the word out and making Rose Marie remember maggots wri
ggling through a deer carcass. “The people loathed the lepers. Everyone loathed them but Jesus.”
The shadow priest loathed himself, but watching him, she thought he was taking pleasure in his loathing, working at it like it was his sacred duty.
She needed her Anataki back. Who had always listened. Who had believed her, had even seen the shadow sister herself. She crossed herself with holy water and left the chapel.
As she climbed the stairs to the dorm, she remembered what Mother Grace had said to her that afternoon. Mother had been upset, still upset, and that newspaper on her desk was folded so tightly she couldn’t read the headline. “God doesn’t always answer our prayers in the manner we expect, Rose Marie. He provides answers, but we don’t necessarily understand them. Not at first. We have to use this—” She had tapped her temple with a forefinger.
But Rose Marie’s brain wasn’t working. Her skull had cracked, and if she went up the steps too fast, pieces would break off and shatter. Yet she wasn’t dying. All this blue, all her heartsick, and yet she just wouldn’t, couldn’t seem to die.
29
Paperwork
MOTHER GRACE ASSUMED that Father Alphonses had told William about Tom Two Horse’s death firsthand, though he had informed her by simply muttering “terrible tragedy” and shoving the newspaper in her hand. Body Found Behind Hilltop Catholic Church the headline screamed, as she opened it on the kitchen table.
Since reading the article, she had tried not to think of Tom, yet thoughts of him kept dropping into her mind like black rain. Aie foi en Dieu, she told herself, pressing her fingers to her eyelids. Trust in the Almighty. Piled in front of her on the desk was the bookkeeping she should be doing, would be doing if she could stop the memories of Tom. She hadn’t thought she remembered what he looked like, but Mon Dieu, there he was—a first-year boy, small for his age, his eyes as large and soft as those of a new calf, an immature and vulnerable child with no brothers or cousins to protect him.
