Black Apple

by Joan Crate

  Hearing footsteps in the hall, she glanced up in time to see Father William hurry past her door, a cup and saucer clattering in his hands.

  “Father William,” she called, but he didn’t so much as slow down.

  He was taking all his meals with Father David this week, carrying them up to their suite on the second floor rather than sitting in the dining room with Brother Abe. Perhaps he was afraid he’d miss Father David now that the old man had finally decided to retire to the Oblates’ facility in Toronto.

  The first Thursday of Lent would be St. David’s Day, and while honouring his namesake, the religious community of St. Mark would also celebrate Father David’s service to the school. On the Saturday, Father Alphonses would drive Father David and his boxes to Hilltop to catch the train.

  She wanted to ask William about Tom’s death. Did he have any insights; indeed, any guilt? She could think of little else, and since Father William was avoiding her, she would have to find out the details from Father Alphonses. Despite not having money in the budget for unnecessary calls, she reached for the phone and dialled the rectory in Hilltop.

  “Well, Grace,” Father Alphonses impertinently addressed her. “It was snowing and the walk needed shovelling. I went around the back of the rectory to retrieve the shovel. Nothing clears the mind before Sunday services like shovelling snow.”

  Such false levity, she thought.

  “I was breaking ice from the top stair when I noticed something grey hanging from the big elm at the back of the yard. I couldn’t tell what it was.” There was a pause, and she heard the muffled sound of popping joints. Father Alphonses had an annoying habit of pulling at his cold fingers when nervous.

  “He had hung himself,” Father Alphonses said finally. “I hardly knew the young man, but he was a drinker. Hadn’t made much of his life since he left school. Why he chose the churchyard to do his dirty deed, I can’t say.”

  “Well, I can. Unless he was about to hitchhike to St. Mark’s or St. Gerard’s, there wasn’t a more appropriate place. Both church and school were the sources of his suffering, and if you don’t know that as well as I do, you can guess.”

  Her outburst startled her, and she pressed her fingers to her lips. Normally she held her tongue until she could think of a way to approach controversial topics diplomatically. But her jaw was sore with all the tongue-holding she’d been doing for the past four decades.

  “Well . . . why . . . Mother Grace, I’ll have you know—” Father Alphonses stuttered, but she had no time for his attempt at righteous indignation.

  “That’s all I wanted to know, Alphonses.” And she hung up.

  * * *

  Just before supper, she heard Father William quietly making his way down the hall towards the kitchen. As quickly as she could manage, she got up from her desk and moved to the door.

  “Father William.” She stepped neatly in front of him.

  “Oh.” As she caught his eye, he looked down.

  “I was just recalling when you were Brother William, before you returned to the seminary to become a priest.”

  He was clearly uncomfortable. “I’m afraid I, um—”

  “The school was coeducational then. Remember?”

  “Yes, Mother Grace, I do. I’m sorry, but I really must—”

  “Of course, that was before the fire that forced the Antelope Hills students to attend St. Mark’s. My, but it was crowded, wasn’t it, Father? St. Mark’s nearly burst at the seams. What did it take? Two years before we finally got money to build St. Gerard’s and make it the boys’ school? Another year before the doors opened. And it wasn’t finished then. You went to St. Gerard’s with the boys.”

  “Yes. Now I, um, really must get Father David his dinner.” He ducked around her and rushed away. As if he knew exactly where the conversation was headed.

  Mon Dieu, she could see now that so much of what had gone wrong at St. Gerard’s and St. Mark’s had been unnecessary. She was so naive back then. She should have opened her eyes. Instead, she did as she had always done: she had trusted her superiors and prayed to God that things would improve. Just as she was always advising the sisters to do.

  And what good had it done? Father Damien, a man subject to temptations of the flesh, had been sent to St. Mark’s from St. Gerard’s after he beat poor Tom Two Horse so soundly. None of the sisters had been unduly concerned when Damien arrived, because no one had informed them that he had been transferred to St. Gerard’s from a school up north due to unseemly allegations involving senior girls. She still wondered if Father Matthew had told Father David, who simply hadn’t passed on this “trivial” piece of information to Mother Paul Pius, or if Matthew had kept Father Damien’s shameful conduct to himself.

  To make matters worse, Father William, with his own proclivities, had remained at the boys’ school. Why hadn’t Father Matthew reprimanded Father Damien for his violence against Tom and then placed him under his watchful eye? If the man had a watchful eye in his empty head. Conversely, an all-girls’ school would have been a much better place for Brother William, who had grown too fond of certain male students, the ill-fated Tom Two Horse for one. The beating administered to Tom by Father Damien had been the act that had started even more trouble.

  She wished William hadn’t run off just now. She wanted to be absolutely certain he knew about the death of Tom Two Horse. Non, he knew. She was certain of it. She turned back to her office and her accounts.

  But she couldn’t concentrate. Little Tommy was watching her.

  He must have been ten years old when he went off to St. Gerard’s with the other boys. And encountered the wrath of Father Damien, as it turned out. She remembered Brother William, while delivering supplies to St. Mark’s, in a breathless recounting of the crime, describing the marks Damien had left on Tommy’s back as “terrible welts on the boy’s flawless skin.” That was the beginning, she supposed, of Father William’s subsequent fixation on young Tom.

  And now the young man had hanged himself in the Hilltop churchyard. She folded her hands on her chest and closed her eyes. Sweet Jesus, be not his judge, but his Saviour.

  Perhaps this third terrible death would signal the end of the monstrous cycle that had begun with the mysterious deaths of Father Damien and Sister Mary of Bethany—what was it, ten years previous, now? She must believe that. For with Thee there is merciful forgiveness. She hoped.

  Crois en Dieu, she admonished herself. She had trusted in the Lord since she was a toddler nestled between her two big brothers as Maman read them Bible stories. Throughout her childhood, the family had never sat down to a meal, no matter how meagre, without a prayer preceding it. She had been raised to believe that through God’s infinite mercy, anything was possible.

  Maybe it was. The war had ended, after all, and the school budget had been modestly increased. And though the residential school system had its critics—she herself at times, she had to admit, and oui, Father Patrick certainly—though she had devoted a large part of her life to St. Mark’s Residential School with its illnesses, deaths, and chronic despondency, though there were grumblings among politicians about closing the schools—the Lord would surely reclaim her years of service—often frustrating, always challenging—and redeem them. Crois en Dieu. In due time, He would reveal her true purpose to her.

  She opened her eyes and looked around. She could almost see how it would happen: a younger, more vigorous woman with love in her heart to take over the running of the school as she aged. And someone else—a younger woman appearing, as if out of nowhere, a guide of sorts, someone to set things right. She, herself, would contribute as mentor and superior. She had her role to play, most certainly.

  The books. She had to finish the first half of the fiscal year if it killed her. So far the school year had been a difficult one, and something concrete had to be salvaged, if only neat paperwork and a balanced budget.

  30

  The Visitation

  EACH NIGHT, THE sun trimmed a piece of dark clot
h from its hem. Ice melted in the schoolyard, and streams trickled by day, freezing at night. Rose Marie’s body diluted, seeping into the wood, brick, and plaster around her. Each season, it seemed, the school absorbed more of her.

  One morning, just after Sister Joan’s clanging bell had broken her sleep apart, Rose Marie looked over to Susanna’s bed and saw the shadow sister collapse beside it, hands pressing the side of her belly. “He did this to me,” she moaned.

  She was everywhere now—Sister Mary of Bethany, or the ghost of Sister Mary, or sta-ao, whoever, whatever she was—always hovering in the dark corners of the dormitory or the bathroom, clutching her side as if in pain, muttering. But she was different too, less solid-looking than before, less human and active, but pervasive, ubiquitous. Rose Marie had to smile as she sank back into the mattress. There was no doubt that she was picking up Mother Grace’s vocabulary. As she closed her eyes, she heard Sister Mary’s voice drifting like a lost line: He’s killing me. Now I’m going to kill him.

  Her eyes flew open. She was about to hiss to the shadow sister, “Go away!” The words you bitch were stones falling through her brain and taking her back to that day in the barnyard with the chickens squawking and the man falling through the blue summer sky. As she looked over to Susanna’s bed, she saw the shadow sister’s form—little more than graphite lines wavering over the floor, a pathetic sketch of a life. Oh God, oh God, oh God.

  She just couldn’t take any more. Not without Taki. She couldn’t put it off any longer. She would tell someone. She had to.

  * * *

  Instead of filing to chapel with the other girls after lunch on Saturday, Rose Marie ran up to the dormitory and opened the door to the wardrobe at the end of her row. She still wasn’t sure if she was ready to tell Father William about the shadow priest and nun, how the priest followed the nun, what he did to her, and what the nun was about to do—no, already had done years before—to him. She needed a private place to think. As she crawled into the cupboard, she heard two girls come into the dorm.

  “So, what are you going to confess this time?”

  “I’m going to admit that I’m in love with Peter Gift to the Sun,” a girl answered decisively. It must be Rachel, a senior who was always falling in love. Rose Marie was sure she recognized the characteristic thickening of her s’s.

  “No, you can’t tell him that!” the other voice cautioned. Prissy First Rifle, Rachel’s best friend. “He’ll want you to quit him. Tell him you’re worried about your immortal soul.”

  “My what?”

  “Well, that’s what the crazy one tells him, that Rosary Mary, whatever her name is. I heard her once. Everyone else had gone and she went inside, so I put my ear against the confessional—”

  “It’s Rose Marie, stupid. And shut up. She’s related to your cousin Esther.”

  “By marriage only. And her dad, you know, he’s that medicine man, the one they call Blessed Wolf? Well, he moved away after her mum died and didn’t even take her.”

  “Why don’t you confess you listened at the door of the confessional?”

  “Yeah, sure. Father would kill me. Hey, I know, I’ll tell Father William I’m having impure thoughts.”

  “About who?”

  “About him!”

  Rachel started laughing. “And what will I tell him?”

  “Tell him you’re having impure thoughts too.”

  “About him?”

  “No. About Sister Margaret.”

  Rose Marie, huddled in the closet, thought the girls would choke to death, they were giggling so ferociously. Even though they had stated plainly what she already knew—that many of the students thought she was nuts—she didn’t feel the usual sting of rejection. In fact, she had to bite her hand to stop from laughing out loud. It was way too long since she had heard any of the girls laugh like that. The way Mama had laughed, making Papa laugh, and then her, all three of them. The way she and Taki used to laugh, jumping and snorting, tears running down their cheeks.

  “Girls, get down here now!” Sister Cilla’s voice blasted from the staircase.

  Rose Marie could hear them rushing away, trying to muffle their giggles.

  She’d wait a minute, crouched in the dark wardrobe. Then she’d go downstairs to chapel. She breathed deeply, smelling the musty stockings and underwear in the drawers under her, the nightdress hanging over her head. The toe of a shoe dug into her bum, but despite it all, she knew what she had to do. She’d tell Father William.

  * * *

  In the confessional, Rose Marie opened her mouth and let her words fall into Father’s ears. She told him about the shadow sister, how for seven years she had witnessed the young nun on the top two floors of St. Mark’s.

  She heard Father William shift in his seat and scratch his beard. “Why have you never confessed this before?” he asked.

  She smelled his sweat and his doubt.

  “I have confessed it before,” she told him. “Father David didn’t believe me about Sister Mary of Bethany. But, Father William,” she rushed on, “now there’s someone else.”

  “Yes?”

  “A priest, a terrible priest!” Her voice quavered. She saw someone through the screen, not Father William, but a young man, face bloated, his neck raw, a rope—“Oh, God help me,” she murmured.

  “Of course God will help you, child,” Father William said. His voice was soft, almost tender, and the young man faded away. “But you know, now that Father David has retired to the east, I am the only priest here, and I assure you—”

  “No, not you.” She peered through the screen. It really was just Father William sitting in shadow, the edge of his beard half lit by the dim light on his side of the confessional. She was seeing too much, too many of the dead. Maybe she was imagining half of them. She had to get at least Sister Mary of Bethany’s story off her chest, and Father Damien’s too. Maybe that was her role. A witness to the dead. And maybe the discloser of secrets. “It wasn’t Brother Abe either. It was a ghost priest,” she whispered.

  “A ghost priest.” He snorted. “Well, what can you tell me about this, this . . . ?”

  “Black oily hair brushed straight back.” She closed her eyes to concentrate. He was slightly taller than the sister, but how tall was that? “Rusty eyes. He wears a ring with an X on it. And he has a cut on his cheek.” She swallowed. The words, which had come easily when she started the confession, were now clogging her throat. “Something ugly happened,” she said. “Disgraceful,” a word Sister Joan liked to use. She wouldn’t tell Father William that she wasn’t exactly sure what it was. She could hear him wheezing through the screen.

  “I’m listening,” he said, suddenly intent.

  “He jumped on Sister Mary of Bethany.” She pushed her words over the lump in her throat and kept her eyes lowered so she wouldn’t see the man with the swollen face and raw neck if he appeared next to Father William again. “He did something to her. She was in pain.”

  A voice whispered in her ear, Mama’s voice. Auntie Connie, she said. And then Rose Marie knew.

  “She had a baby growing in the wrong place. He did that to her, and now she wants to kill him. I think, Father William, she might have, well . . . asked him to meet her there, in the barn.” She remembered the small, high door on the side of the barn and a hand outstretched. “I think she pushed him from the top of the barn.”

  Finally, she had said it out loud.

  Silence.

  She was afraid of what would happen now, but she had heard Mama’s voice. Mama was with her. From time to time.

  * * *

  Mother Grace didn’t look up when she heard the rap on her door. The faltering knock of a faltering man, she thought as she signed her name in a flourish to the supplies order. Surprisingly, today her hands didn’t ache at all.

  “Come in.” Two tentative footsteps came across the floor. She looked up—into the face of Rose Marie Whitewater. “I was expecting Father William.”

  “Father William t
old me I should come tell you, Mother Grace. What I saw. What happened.”

  “Yes, Rose Marie?” The girl looked different, Mother Grace thought, though she couldn’t put her finger on how, exactly. “Don’t be nervous, chérie. Sit down and tell me what on earth you are talking about.”

  “Father William said I should tell you about my Visitation.”

  The last word was forced, louder than the others, a word Rose Marie obviously was not familiar with. One Father William had, no doubt, supplied.

  Rose Marie studied her small hands, and when she looked back up, her expression was calm, though her sentences were rushed. “Sister Mary of Bethany is always in the dorm and now Father Damien is too. They were dead, but they couldn’t leave.”

  Heavens! Mother Grace blinked. The dear girl must have heard about the events of that terrible summer ten years before! Mon Dieu, she had done everything she could to prevent rumours and speculation. If any of the students returning in the fall asked where Sister Mary of Bethany was, she had instructed the sisters they were to be told she had gone east. Other than that, there was to be no further talk of the incident, lest the students overhear.

  “What, dear child, do you mean?”

  “Please listen, Mother Grace. Father William wants me to tell you what I told him in confession.”

  “All right.” She sighed impatiently, yet she had to admit, her curiosity was piqued.

  “The sister and the priest wander through the dormitory. I see them and others too—girls mostly, who died here. I’ve seen them so many times and—”

  “Ghosts?”

  “Yes, Mother Grace.”

  Mon Dieu! After Sister Mary of Bethany’s mysterious death, several students and two of the sisters had sworn to seeing her in the dormitory, Sister Lucy being one of them. And poor Lucy had never been the same since. Nom d’un chien, wasn’t it enough to endure the unexpected deaths of two religious without having ridiculous stories to contend with, she had thought at the time. “Surely the figure of Sister Mary of Bethany is nothing more than the product of fear,” she had cajoled Sister Lucy.