Black Apple

by Joan Crate

  “Aren’t you being a little rash in making this decision, Sister Cilla?” she asked a few minutes later, a tumbler of brandy in her hand. “Surely you don’t think you’re the only sister who has ever been in love?”

  Sister Cilla looked down at her, astonished. “Dear, oh law, I never . . . Well, I guess not, Mother Grace.”

  “And Sister Bernadette was certainly remiss if she ever left you alone with that man.”

  “Dear, it’s not Sister Bernadette’s fault.”

  “I really have to wonder if the younger generation has any concept of sacrifice, any idea of what service to the Lord means, any desire to labour for the greater good!” Looking up at Cilla, she saw her face crumple. “Mon Dieu, sit down before you fall down, Priscilla.”

  “I tried, Mother Grace,” Sister Cilla wailed, collapsing on the end of Mother Grace’s bed. “Time and again, I really did.” She snatched up her skirt and wiped her nose. “For eight years, Olaf has been asking me to marry him. I thought he was joking at first—we like to share a laugh—and I shrugged it off. Later I knew he was serious, but I turned him down. I prayed. I put myself at God’s mercy.”

  Sister Cilla’s face was blotchy, her eyes were a little wild, but Mother Grace noticed that her voice had steadied.

  She took another good long swallow of brandy, fully aware that Cilla could probably use a drink herself. Tant pis, she was too annoyed to offer her one.

  “This time when Olaf proposed, I knew that I wanted what he wanted: a family. I knew my heart wasn’t in my work here anymore. And most of all, Mother Grace, I knew that I love him.”

  “Love?” Mother Grace uttered the word like the punch line of a bad joke. Her intention was to imply that in light of the divine, romantic love was ridiculous, a parody of God’s love. That was how she should feel. In fact, before Patrick’s death, it was how she believed she did feel. “Love,” she said again, more softly. “Well, Sister Cilla, I’ll summon you tomorrow when I have more to say on this matter. Va t’en.” Since it was St. Jude’s Day and since he was the patron saint of desperate causes, she’d say a prayer or two about keeping Sister Cilla at St. Mark’s.

  * * *

  The following day, Mother Grace awoke in a grim mood. Despite her prayers to St. Jude, she had the feeling Sister Cilla would not remain a Sister of Brotherly Love and, when the time came, take the reins from her and run the school. She had seen the set of Cilla’s jaw and heard a winsome note in her voice when she said Olaf’s name. Oui, and her departure would irrevocably alter the future of St. Mark’s as she had imagined it, as she had hoped and prayed it would be.

  Her misfortunes had started with Rose Marie’s departure, she realized. Then came the terrible news of Patrick’s death. After that, the order to close some residential schools—not St. Mark’s, at least. Now Sister Cilla was running off with a man like, like une catin. What was God doing?

  Mon Dieu, but she was old and useless. The knowledge carved its way through her with a twisted blade as she dressed and struggled downstairs to her office. How could you, Jesus? she muttered, staring up at Patrick’s cross. How could you take so much from me?

  Yet she still had the girl. She must not forget that. What was that precious little saying Sister Bernadette chirped from time to time? God doesn’t close a door without opening a window.

  Dear Rose Marie, she would write. By the time you get this, it will be a month before your return to St. Mark’s, the order’s requirements fulfilled. After a recuperation period, you will travel by train to the Mother House. Your destiny awaits you, child! After two years, God willing, you will return here as an ordained Sister of Brotherly Love. It is all unfolding, Rose Marie, just as God intended. She’d write those exact words without mentioning that Sister Cilla would not be her chaperone to the Mother House, that it would have to be Sister Simon instead, and possibly Sister Bernadette too.

  Was there something else she had to attend to concerning Rose Marie? She had the feeling there was, but she couldn’t focus, and truth be known, she didn’t care enough to try.

  With Rose Marie gone to the Mother House, what would be in store for her? Well, she considered, taking the nail file from her top drawer, she could begin to chronicle Rose Marie’s childhood and the details of the Visitation, her first miracle. Oui, Rose Marie was her window. The loss of Cilla was simply the price she had to pay for indulging in self-pity after Patrick’s death. She had ignored the needs of others when they had most required her. She sank to the floor beside her chair and knelt on her stiff knees.

  Lord. But as she closed her eyes, it wasn’t the cross Patrick had made her that burned into her brain; it was the crucifix hanging over her bed upstairs. Bronze—the face, cut by shadows, dark and craggy. An Indian face. Forgive us, Père, we know not what we do. Tears trickled down her old cheeks.

  44

  Undeserved Extravagances

  ANOTHER DAY GONE,” Rose Marie muttered to herself as she slipped into bed each night. Another night closer to her return to St. Mark’s. Yet each dawn made her feel farther from the school and the sisters, especially from Mother Grace, who still had not written. Didn’t the old bat care about her anymore?

  Her room and board was due in two days, Mrs. Mooney told her at breakfast. “Better write to that school of yours again, cookie. Father Seamus won’t pay it. He’s tighter than a nun’s cunt.”

  Ruby and the men roared at that, and Rose Marie felt her face flush. She had no idea what cunt meant. Knowing Mrs. Mooney, it was something vulgar.

  The coming month would be her last in Black Apple. She wasn’t sad, glad, excited, or despondent. Just confused. Mother of all we who are motherless, I want to belong somewhere; I want a home, she found herself praying into her milky coffee. Then, to be respectful, she added, Help me to accept my losses and submit to God’s will. Whatever “God’s will” was. She didn’t even know her own.

  As she walked through the town from the rectory that evening, she wondered if Mother Grace had mailed the cheque yet, or at least contacted Father Seamus about covering her room and board. Mother Grace was well known for her convincing letters, her words carefully chosen, her script so perfectly formed it legitimized any request she made. Usually. But there was no usually about anything in Black Apple.

  As she looked at the mountains illuminated by the setting sun, euphoria rose in her. She recalled Mama’s laundry bushes and Papa’s trap shack; the fishers, badgers, bears, deer, and coyotes in her country; how her family had lived among them, and she hadn’t known how happy she was until the men came and took her away. She imagined her childhood home hollowed out and leaning precariously under a buildup of snow, the front porch sagging to the ground—and her joy drained away.

  She needed someone.

  For seven years at St. Mark’s, she had enjoyed Anataki’s friendship. How Taki’s jokes and giggles had warmed the miserable dormitory. How her death, like Mama’s and now Papa’s, made the world a colder, emptier place. For the five years following Taki’s death, she had little more than lukewarm friendships with the other girls her age and not much more than the acceptance of the sisters. Well, Sisters Cilla and Bernadette liked her; she was pretty sure of that. And Mother Grace had considered her special. Actually, Mother Grace liked her a lot, she had to admit.

  During catechism, Mother Grace’s bluebottle eyes had sparkled when she answered questions correctly or asked her own. Yet Mother Grace had not told her about Papa’s death. She had not sent her room and board or settled with Father Seamus either. She had abandoned her. Just like everyone else.

  Since being taken to St. Mark’s, she had travelled a long way in both distance and experience, finally becoming an almost-nun. But here in Black Apple, she was an Indian first of all, it seemed: someone to use and beat up, according to Rolfe Mooney. Disreputable, according to Mrs. Tortorelli. A drunk and a criminal, as far as Father Seamus was concerned.

  To Cyril she was his “little girl” friend, but to Frank, she was a woman. A shiver ra
n through her.

  Still and always, she was daughter of Michel and Ernestine and sister of Joseph. Yes, and friend-sister to Anataki, who had come back to her. Sisters are important, Rosie, Taki had said. Brothers too.

  That night, she dreamt of her brother.

  She was floating in a vast lake. Raising her head, she looked around, but there was nothing but water. Then a face surfaced a few feet away. “Kiaa-yo!” she called, then “Joseph!” But the water moved swiftly; the lake became a river and carried her away. Soon he was just a speck bobbing in the distance.

  Was Joseph a God-fearing boy? she wondered when she awoke in her dark bedroom. He was her brother, but she knew almost nothing about him. Her own blood. Perhaps he was a wild young man, maybe even more than Frank. Or he could be traditional, like Papa. The thought warmed her. Maybe, like Papa, he danced and healed and hunted.

  * * *

  The following day was hectic. Though Father Seamus had cancelled many of Father Patrick’s community events, he was permitting a luncheon after the special service celebrating All Saints’ Day. Rose Marie made sandwiches, cut the squares Mrs. Rees had baked that morning, rushed around filling plates and pouring tea, and then did the dishes so that Mrs. Rees, who had been run off her feet, could have “a cuppa and a sit-down.”

  By the time she left the rectory at ten to six, fatigue stuck to her like a coat of grime. She arrived at the old Mooney place in time to wave off Mrs. Mooney’s insistence that she eat.

  “I’m stuffed full of sandwiches,” she said.

  With Ruby working a double shift at the Dominion, and Mrs. Mooney hurrying off to the curling briar, she decided to indulge herself, to take a bath in the deep tub with the chipped enamel lip. She loved baths, she had discovered. Saturday-night assembly-line showers had been the only form of full-body bathing available at St. Mark’s, and in her first few years at the school, when Sister Margaret was in charge of the dorm, the girls had to shower in their underwear. Sister Cilla, when she took over, had found that notion silly and told them to disrobe so they could wash behind the oilcloth curtains, “as God intended.”

  During her first week at the boardinghouse, Mrs. Mooney had told her that she was welcome to two full baths a week, and short, shallow ones “when necessary.” The men of the boardinghouse were permitted just one bath per week. “They got showers at the mine. Just make sure you don’t tie up the bathroom for long.”

  Three weeks after Rose Marie’s arrival, Mrs. Mooney stopped depositing the standard Ivory in the upstairs bathroom and indulged Rose Marie, Ruby, and herself by purchasing sculpted oval cakes dyed pink, green, or mauve in “American Beauty Rose, “Spring Blossom,” and “Lilac Splendour” scents. Each cake of soap had a woman’s silhouetted head stamped in the centre, and its flowery smell drifted invitingly down the hall. At least, Rose Marie thought it inviting. Cyril complained that the soap made him smell like a cheap whore, excuse his language.

  That evening presented the perfect opportunity for a long soak. And who would know if she spent an hour locked in the bathroom? Ruby and Mrs. Mooney were out, Cyril and Frank were having a nightcap in Cyril’s room, and the downstairs miners were gone, either working or washing coal dust down their throats at the Dominion Hotel. If they needed to, Cyril and Frank could use the downstairs bathroom, for heaven’s sake.

  She ran her bath, then sank into it, inch by luscious inch, allowing the water to rinse worry and sandwich spread away. She shampooed her hair with Halo, piled it on her head, then stood in the bath to survey her coiffure in the steamy cabinet mirror. Glamorous. She liked the exotic sound of that word. And the fact that it had never ever been used at St. Mark’s. Lavish. Lying back in the tub, she rinsed her hair, imagining drifting in a tropical sea. She had seen pictures of Hawaii and the Caribbean in the National Geographic at Wong’s. “Honeymooners’ Paradise,” the article was captioned.

  The day before, as they had their tea, Mrs. Rees had told her a story that she couldn’t stop thinking about.

  “Forty-four years ago today, I came here,” she said, her eyes peering through her past. “My two older brothers, Evan and Daffyd, sent for me. Said they had a husband picked out and mailed me a ticket on a steamship.”

  Mrs. Rees had come to Black Apple from somewhere else and things had worked out for her. “He was a dour one, this Gilbert they had picked. Worked in the same coal room in the mine as Daffyd, and always grumbling about stiff joints and all the miners who’d died.”

  Nibbling a scone, she wondered if Gilbert was the ailing Mr. Rees, the “old darlin’ ” Mrs. Rees often took a saucer of sweets to from the rectory kitchen, the husband who insisted on walking her at least halfway to work each morning despite his emphysema, the kind man she sat beside at Mass.

  “I was coming out of McBride’s after picking up a nice roast for dinner—Dafydd had invited Gilbert again—and I was already carrying a twenty-pound bag of potatoes from Wong’s. Right then a nice-looking young man walked past, saw me, and stopped.”

  He was a few inches taller than Mrs. Rees—Miss Brocket, then—with brown wavy hair.

  “ ‘Please, my dear,’ he said, ‘let me help you.’ He walked me home, carrying both bags. We were approaching my brothers’ shack when he spied Evan sitting on the front step smoking, and it turned out they knew each other from the mine.”

  “ ‘Hello there, Brocket,’ he called, not knowing Evan’s my brother. ‘I see you’re green with envy, but you’re not getting near this lovely lady, because I’m going to make her my wife.’ ”

  “ ‘Well then, mate,’ says Evan, ‘I’d better invite you in for supper if we’re going to be family.’ Two months later, when Gilbert told me we better talk seriously about getting married, I was already engaged to Theo.”

  Mrs. Rees had laughed then, giggled like the girls in the dormitory sometimes did, like she and Anataki had. “Gilbert’s an old man now, sour as a pickle but healthy as a horse! Never married, did he.”

  She imagined the young Miss Brocket and Theo in each other’s arms, his hands—callused from work, a little coal-stained around the nails where a brush wouldn’t reach—pulling her close, a tang of sweat pressing against the scent of shaving lather.

  Rose Marie slid her hand to the straw and silk between her legs. Her thighs tingled.

  When she climbed out of the bath, she opened the cupboard and pulled out one of the thick lavender towels Mrs. Mooney had told her and Ruby they could use. “Just for us girls,” she had said. “The men can use those old ones. As if they’d know the difference.”

  She dried her face and neck, skimming quickly over her nipples and belly, ignoring the wet between her thighs, then scoured her legs until tiny rolls of dry skin peeled away. Clean. She pulled her St. Mark’s cotton nightdress over her head, wrapped her hair in the towel, and tied the dressing gown Mrs. Mooney had lent her. It was miles too big, but she remembered Sister Margaret always warning, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  She opened the door and started down the hall. Walking on air. That’s what Mrs. Rees had said. “Going down the aisle on my wedding day, I was walking on air.” Rose Marie felt that way too.

  She turned the corner and ran smack into Frank.

  “Oh!”

  He leaned into her, and she smelled alcohol on his breath; then his fresh earth scent engulfed her. He drew her close, his nose pressing her forehead.

  “Oh,” she said again, her hand on his chest pushing him back.

  “Rose Marie,” he whispered. “Niita-wah-kah-taan.” He reached for her again, and this time she fell into him, let his mouth find hers. She understood.

  “Come,” he whispered, pulling her to his side. His arm around her, they started towards the stairs.

  “No,” she said, shocked by her response to his warmth and scent. “No,” as he pulled her closer.

  She heard Cyril’s door swing open.

  “Frank,” Cyril said firmly, “you leave her alone. I told you. She’s a church girl,
for Christ’s sake!”

  Frank lunged at Cyril, pushing him against the wall, lightning crackling around him. “And I told you, stop interfering with her and me!” He punched Cyril in the jaw.

  Cyril’s head hit the wall. For a fraction of a second, he looked dazed. Then he charged, his weight catapulting Frank towards the staircase. Frank flew down a few stairs, but one sinewy arm caught the banister, and he flung himself upright. He rushed back up at Cyril.

  “Stop!” she screamed, jumping between the two men. She pushed one hand against Cyril’s chest, the other against Frank’s. “That’s quite enough. You’re acting like children!” She recognized Mother Grace’s authority in her voice, Sister Joan’s words.

  “What the fuck’s going on up there?” a man yelled from below. Reggie, coming through the front door. “Frank, is that you? For Christ’s sake, quit it, or I’m calling the fuckin’ cops!”

  Cyril pushed in front of her and glowered at Frank.

  Frank looked from Cyril down the stairs to Reggie, who glared up at him. Shoulders rounded, he shook his head. “I wouldn’t hurt her,” he said to Cyril. “Jesus, you know damn well I wouldn’t do nothing to hurt her.”

  For a few moments, it was so quiet that Rose Marie could hear each one of them breathing.

  Then Cyril said, “Get the hell out of here.”

  Frank slunk down the stairs and slammed through the door.

  “Are you all right?” Cyril asked, turning to her.

  “Yes.” But she was gasping and hiccuping at the same time. She couldn’t catch her breath.

  “Frank likes you, but don’t understand about that thing you said—”

  “My holy vocation.”

  She should turn away and walk across the hall to her room. Oh, but she couldn’t trust her legs, was afraid that if she tried to move, she’d topple right down the stairs. Father William’s warnings rang in her ears, words she had never fully understood—shame, weakness, sin—notions that until that very minute hadn’t meant a thing to her. She couldn’t stop trembling.