Belladonna

by Anbara Salam

  “What’s that?” Greta pointed toward the hill, where, coming down from the convent, two sisters carried a straw figurine in a white cloak. At first I thought it was a scarecrow, but as the sisters drew close I could see a rosary around its neck. It was meant to be a nun.

  “Mother Mary,” said Isabella, crossing herself ostentatiously, then burying her face in the crook of Sylvia’s shoulder.

  I set my teeth.

  “They’re not going to burn it, are they?” breathed Greta. “Surely they can’t burn a fake—a fake sister?”

  Nancy grimaced. “We should ask Sister Teresa.”

  We searched the crowd for her, but she was nowhere to be seen.

  “Weird.” Nancy frowned. “I’d’ve thought she would be joining in. It’s her saint’s day, too, after all.”

  “Don’t sweat it, Nance,” Isabella called over the wheelbarrow. “Sister Teresa’s got to attend some special prayer anyway back at the convent. Me and Sibbs will smuggle her a cake.”

  Sylvia screeched with laughter as if it were the most hilarious joke she had ever heard.

  I turned away from them both and squeezed past Nancy through the crowd. The straw figurine of the sister was being passed through outstretched arms until Marco grappled with it in the center of the square. He propped it up in a wooden bucket, and as I looked closer I saw that a sprig of silk apple blossom had been set where the mouth should be. I couldn’t decide if it was pretty or creepy. Greta and Sally came with a tankard filled to the brim with cider to find me, but it mustn’t have been too clean, as the liquor tasted bitter and dank with dust. Marco pulled a cart of wood from behind the chapel and began loading wood around the figure.

  Katherine nudged toward us. “Nancy said you were asking about the—” She gestured toward the firewood. She was unsteady on her feet and her breath was sweet.

  Greta nodded. “It’s spooky. It’s so strange they’re going to burn it.”

  Katherine shrugged. “Not so strange. That is how she died, anyway.”

  We fell quiet. I had forgotten the way in which St. Teresa was martyred. I tried to remember the details from our welcome file, but only settled on the image of her red hair mingling with the flames.

  “But—but why would you celebrate it? Someone dying in such a horrible way?” Greta asked, her cheeks going pink. I saw Sally slip her hand into Greta’s and give it a reassuring squeeze.

  Katherine sighed. “It’s not a party or anything. More like a—commen—commem—” She focused hard on the word, and I was embarrassed for her to be so obviously tipsy in public.

  “Commemoration,” I supplied.

  “Yes,” Katherine said. “Since she was already supposed to be dead”—she tapped her chest—“you know, inside. A shell. Filled with God.” She blinked at us. “You could ask Ruth. She knows even more about it—” She turned to and fro, searching for Ruth in the crowd.

  “No, thanks,” I said. “We’re fine.”

  After Katherine left us, Greta was pale. “I don’t think I could do it,” she said quietly.

  “Do what, honey?” Sally brushed the hair from Greta’s face.

  “Stay silent, even while I was being burned.” She looked at us seriously. “Even if I was filled with God.”

  “Course not, honey,” Sally said soothingly. “That’s why God would never test you like that. He would trial you in a way you could really bear. Like asking you to give up peanut butter.” And she tickled her.

  Greta broke into a smile, reluctantly at first, and then she began laughing and batted Sally’s hand away before leaning over and embracing her.

  I took a step away from them and averted my eyes, feeling suddenly like I was intruding.

  “What would be your trial, Bridge?” Greta reached out over Sally’s shoulder for me.

  They shuffled to stand with their arms over each other’s shoulders, watching me with identical expressions of cheerful expectation.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Giving up your beautiful curls?” Greta lifted her hand to my hair.

  “I’d get rid of these in a flash,” I said, but they had begun to talk between themselves about the tragedy of a life without dogs, or chocolate, or Christmas.

  I watched as Marco and his brother argued about how to build the fire over the figure of the sister. Was it true that all the sisters were being tried by God? It was odd to imagine them as nothing but husks filled with God. Sister Teresa didn’t seem especially like an empty shell to me. A bit boring maybe, but not empty.

  After the firewood had been arranged around the figure, Marco bashed again on the cider barrel until everyone fell quiet. He gestured for me.

  “Me? Oh no.” I shook my head, clutching the tankard, now slippery with condensation.

  “Go on.” Sally nudged me forward, seizing the cup from my hand.

  Marco handed me a matchbox and pointed toward the bonfire. I tried not to look at the white figure of the sister scarecrow. With clumsy fingers, I struck a match against the box and held it to the crumpled copies of Il Giorno. It curled the edges of the paper and then blew out straightaway. I lit another and another, until the paper caught and began to smolder, the young wood popping and bursting. Marco gestured at me and everyone clapped. I gave a theatrical bow, not even caring what Isabella might think. Greta and Sally and I toasted small apples in the flames and rolled them in trays of brown sugar and cinnamon. The kids danced around, poking at the scarecrow until it disintegrated; someone brought out a guitar and Donna Maria and Signora Bassi danced in a circle, arm in arm. We stood out in the square until the sun hung low and orange over the chestnut trees. I didn’t even look for Isabella. I was giddy on sugar and cider and damp wood and smoke and the first glittering stars.

  That night at dinner the candles were blurring and I wondered if I had taken too much cider. But it made everything soft-centered and hilarious. Unsteadily, I ate my whole bowl of buckwheat noodles and concentrated hard on my lamb cutlet. My hand kept slipping and my knife scratched against the plate. There was a tinny sound in my ears and Greta and Sally’s conversation seemed distant and muffled. I glanced up to see Isabella watching me over the other side of the table. Coolly, I blinked at her, twice, and looked away. The side of my face tickled with the awareness that she was still staring at me. I kept my head carefully poised on Sally, miming absorption. Inflated with a strange sense of victory, I marched out of the refectory and straight up to my bedroom after supper, not even bothering to look backward for Isabella. I took off all my clothes except my bra and panties and slipped under the coverlet. I was as warm and floaty as if the bed were drifting on the lake.

  And then, sometime in the night, I woke to find Isabella standing by the bedside.

  “Move over,” she whispered.

  I was too surprised to object, and shuffled back against the wall so I was lying in the chilled part of the sheets.

  “I’m freezing,” she whispered.

  I felt her forehead, which was hot and clammy.

  “You’re sticky,” I said, pretending to wipe my palms on the sheet.

  “Am not,” she said, flicking me the finger. “I swear. I couldn’t sleep because my teeth are chattering.” Her breath was syrupy on my face.

  I hesitated. She was the one who’d been ignoring me. Was I making it too easy for her?

  “Briddie, come on, warm me up.”

  I took her damp hand in mine.

  “Where did you go? After the bonfire?” Her eyelashes brushed against the pillow.

  “I dressed in Greta’s room. She wanted to borrow my blouse.”

  “Surprised she fit into it,” she said with a snort.

  I said nothing.

  After a moment, she said, “I couldn’t find you.” Her expression was peculiar, somehow both wounded and predatory.

  “Sorry,” I muttered.
>
  “I looked everywhere.”

  “You did?” My heartbeat wobbled against my eardrums.

  She nodded, slipping her hands under my arms. She grazed the tip of my breast as she moved, and a ribbon spun through my body and I stiffened, daring myself not to breathe and give away the rippling feeling. Isabella was watching me closely. I was holding myself so tight my stomach was shaking. She wriggled closer to me, and the glint of light from the window shone in her eyes.

  She wriggled in closer still.

  And then she kissed me.

  * * *

  When I woke the next day I thought I had dreamed it. I was alone in my bed. It was so dark I was disoriented, thinking I had slept until the afternoon. My watch on the bedside table said five thirty. Dazed, I stretched out, trying to make sense of the night before. Perhaps it had been a dream? But there on the floor by the bed was Isabella’s green hair tie. It had a tangle of black hair caught into a bobble at the side. I picked it off the tiles and lay back on the pillows, stretching it between my thumbs. I closed my eyes and ran over only an image at a time, like letting drops of scent out of an almost-empty bottle. Isabella’s warm, treacly breath against my lips. The weight of her hair as I wrapped it around my wrist, dipping my mouth to her skin. And the unwinding and tickling ran through all the muscles in my body, and my skin felt burnished and glowing like after a hot bath. And the day was rearranged and re-sorted. And I was rearranged and re-sorted, and everything was good.

  I ran to the bathroom and stared at my reflection in the mirror, inspecting my mussed-up hair, the rosiness in my cheeks, the round purple bruises on the inside of my arm where her grip had grown stronger and stronger as I kissed her, again and again. Remembering the violence of her grasp shot a throb of desire into my core, so raw it was nearly painful. It strobed through me like the glare from a lighthouse. I splashed water over my face and tried to shake the weakness from my limbs. My fingers were trembling, my pulse veering in unsteady tilts. Everything would be different now.

  14.

  October

  That morning was bright and chilly. It was the first day that truly called for sweaters and scarves, and the girls turned up at breakfast bundled up against a cool breeze feathery with bonfire ash and ripe wheat.

  Every time someone entered the refectory, my head snapped to the door. I couldn’t help myself; I needed to see her face. Last night hardly seemed real. When I saw her expression, I’d know for sure. I lingered until Sister Luisa began clearing the table and mopping under the benches. But Isabella never came. My face was pulpy and tingling as I ran to Italian lessons. What if she was so tight on cider she’d forgotten the whole thing? What if she regretted it and now she was avoiding me deliberately?

  But there she was. Sitting at her usual desk. She turned as I entered, and as her eyes lifted to me, a frail smile crossed her face. It was a slender, almost sad smile. A smile I had never seen before. Elena was explaining the past conditional tense, and I gripped my pencil so hard it cut into my thumb. I ached to look at Isabella properly, the edges of my vision burning. When I dared to glance at her, her face was colorless and she was listlessly doodling pansies in the margins of her notebook. I decided to slip her a note, staring so long at the paper, the lines began swimming. In the end I decided on You OK? She scrawled back, Headache. And then she put her hand over mine, giving it a quick squeeze. I breathed with relief. Just a headache. She really had drunk too much cider.

  Isabella went for a nap at lunch, so I sat with Bunny and Mary Babbage and pretended to listen as they chattered about their plans for the Christmas vacation. It was so easy for them. There was something almost unjust in the careless way the other girls began to plan for ski lodges in Sestriere and RSVP to champagne receptions in Vienna.

  After lunch, I knocked on Isabella’s door but she didn’t answer. Back in my room I smoked three cigarettes in a row, then forced myself to write a letter to Rhona. Even I could see it had a febrile, manic quality, with exclamation marks in every sentence and half the words underlined. I bumped into Joan as I went down to leave the letter in Donna Maria’s tray. As she blinked politely I told her a long and tedious story about my cousin Rhona and her exploits on an imaginary sailing boat I conjured out of unadulterated panic.

  For the afternoon’s lecture, I took my place in my usual spot and draped my cardigan over Isabella’s seat—although everyone knew she always sat next to me. She came in late, her hair mussed up on one side of her head. She sat down and pulled my sweater around her shoulders.

  “Do you mind? I’m frozen.”

  “Of course not,” I said. Although actually I was cold and had to fold my arms over my chest to keep warm.

  Half an hour through the lecture, Isabella pinched me on the back of my hand.

  “I’m going to split,” she said. “I feel like hell.”

  She did look wan, so I nodded. As she squeezed through the row of students and left the room, I composed my chest into a place of order. There was no reason to be disappointed. Just because she left early didn’t mean anything. I marked down the time until the lecture was over, then knocked at her door. There was no answer. After vespers I sorted through my closet, meticulously polishing all my shoes and stuffing them with tissue paper. Before dinner, I went and knocked again on Isabella’s door.

  “Hello?”

  The room was stuffy and dark. I crept closer to the bed.

  “Are you OK?” I said.

  “Yes,” she said wearily, lifting her head off the pillow. With some alarm, I noticed she was still fully dressed.

  “Izzy—” I never called her that. I don’t know why it popped into my head. “Don’t you want to get your nightdress on?”

  “Too tired,” she said, pulling the sheets up to her chin. “And I’m cold. Will you get a blanket from the chest?”

  I picked up the notebooks and the pair of pumps lying on top of her chest and pulled out a tartan blanket, which I laid over the bed.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  I walked round to her pillow and put my palm against her forehead. “You’re hot,” I said, trying to keep the concern out of my voice.

  “It’s fine,” she said. “Be better tomorrow.” She turned over and lay so still, I figured she had already gone back to sleep.

  I filled up the water jug from the bathroom faucet and left it by her bed, then closed the door quietly, smiling to myself. I would have to discourage her from overindulging on hard cider if it disagreed with her so much.

  * * *

  The next day when she didn’t appear for breakfast I began to worry. During Italian, I could hardly concentrate. I asked Elena if I could be excused to go to the restroom and ran two stairs at a time to the upstairs corridor.

  Isabella didn’t answer when I knocked, but I pushed the door open anyway. Piled on the bed was a random assortment of clothes—two of the gray towels, a kilt, her woolen overcoat—as if she had ransacked her closet in a hurry.

  “Isabella,” I said tentatively, in the singsong voice Mama always used on Christmas mornings.

  She murmured.

  I brushed the hair back away from her face. She looked dreadful. “Jesus, you’re burning up.” I pulled some of the bedclothes away to find the sheets soaked in sweat. I heard myself give an intake of breath.

  “Isabella,” I said, more sternly.

  She opened her eyes. “What?” she said crossly.

  “You’re burning up,” I said. “You’re sick. You need a doctor.”

  Her eyes found mine and focused. Her pupils were small and tight. “No way.”

  “What are you talking about? You have the flu or something. We need to get you cooled down and get you some aspirin.” I looked around the room for inspiration.

  “No point,” she said, turning back into the pillow.

  “What?” I was angry at her now. Did she want to be sick? The lea
st she could do was cooperate. I yanked on the shutters and they gave way with such a sudden violence I lost balance. I was glad, though, knowing the brightness of the day would hurt her eyes.

  She yowled, pressing her face into the pillow. “Bridget, go away.”

  “No,” I said, opening the window so cold air sliced into the room. “I’ll get Donna Maria to ring for a doctor.” With a last look at the bed, I walked toward the door. “I’ve got to go. Elena thinks I’m in the restroom.”

  “Briddie—,” she said.

  I paused. Her voice was pathetic. I softened and waited.

  “Briddie?” she said again, a little desperately.

  “I’m here.”

  “Come over?”

  I sat on the end of the bed. She blinked at me from the pillow. Her eyelashes were wet. I touched the shape of her arm under the sheet. She closed her eyes briefly. “Don’t get the doctor—I know what it is. It’s the malaria again.”

  “Oh God,” I said, glancing at the nightstand for I don’t know what.

  “No.” She shook her head. “It’s not like that. It happens sometimes. I get sick for a couple of weeks, and then I’ll be fine. I feel like death for a while. But it’s OK.”

  “God, really?” I reached and stroked her hair away from her face.

  Two tears rolled down her cheeks. She nuzzled her face against the pillow to disperse them. She smiled, and a web of spittle broke open between her lips. “My doctor gave me pills. They should be in the closet, with my makeup.”

  I leaped up and yanked open the closet door. I prayed under my breath that the tablets would be in there. What if she had forgotten them? Would Italian doctors know how to treat malaria? I rummaged in between the rolling tubes of lipstick until I saw the carton of pills.

  “They’re here,” I said, holding them aloft, although my hands were shaking and the pills rattled against the glass.

  Isabella wormed a hand through the blankets. “Just one,” she said.