Black Apple (23 page)

“Our Father . . .”

“Who art in heaven
. .
.”
the sisters joined in.

“Hallowed be Thy name
. .
.”

“Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done
 . . .”

“On earth, as it is in Heaven.”

Soon, Mother Grace knew, she must inform Rose Marie of all this.

  *  *  *  

The next morning, Father William walked into Mother Grace’s office, his face shining with oil and enthusiasm. Did the man never wash?

“Mother Grace, we must take steps to gain official acknowledgement for the miracle at St. Mark’s!”

“Although we’ve been terming the Visitation a miracle, William, that must be decided by the Church and overseen by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.”

“It’s miraculous for us. And it must be given the attention it deserves.”

“Oui,”
she admitted.

“I’m thinking of a speaking tour,” he continued. “Father Alphonses has agreed to come in Sunday afternoons to say Mass while I’m gone.”

“Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself, Father?”

“Of course I’d like your input, Mother Grace. Perhaps you could notify the various parishes.”

“Perhaps,” she allowed. “Now let’s plan this properly. Sit down, Father. As I see it, you should travel as far as Fernie in one direction and Lethbridge in the other. It’s impractical to go farther at this point. I have a feeling that at this particular time, with criticism of the residential school system in the news, the Church will seize upon the Visitation as a consolation if not a victory,” she said, her cynicism shaming her. But only slightly.

“Yes, Mother Grace. Brilliant!” Father William pumped his fist in the air. “Could you also write a letter to the parish bulletins? You have such a talent with the written word.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” she responded, knowing it already had.

Far-reaching implications
, she decided, would be a phrase to use that afternoon during her talk with Rose Marie.
Faith
also.
God’s glory
, and especially
destiny
. Rose Marie would welcome the news, she anticipated. The girl needed encouragement as much as the rest of them.

  *  *  *  

Not quite a month later, Mother Grace had to admit that Father William, bless his small soul, had been right. The reputation of Rose Marie, humble, pious,
Indian
Rose Marie, grew like winter wheat over the prairies, thanks in large part to William’s speaking engagements, and perhaps, a small share to her letters.

She was finishing an order for four new beds at the school when she looked up to see Father William standing at her door.

“
Show me, Lord
, I prayed when I was most uncertain,” he cried as he plunged into the office, a letter in his hand. “And the Lord affirmed the miracle!”

“William, you’re becoming more of an evangelist by the day.”

“Not unlike St. Mark, Mother Grace. It all began with a note of enquiry from the Reverend Josepha Paul of Edmonton, which you answered for me. Then a letter of congratulation signed by Father Josepha and several other proponents of residential schools, all who found my news uplifting.” Father William waved the papers in his hand at her. “And here is a letter of satisfaction from the Right Reverend Jacques Morin of the Oblates! My message is being heard.”

She cleared her throat.

“The message, um, of the Sisters of Brotherly Love.”

S
IIIIN—OOOO—PAAAAAAAA—

Ears pricked, Rose Marie lay unmoving in her bed. It was as if the wind and trees from her long-ago home were calling her name, an old chorus she knew, she used to know so well, many, many years ago when she was a child and not the most senior-senior of St. Mark’s, a young woman just-turned nineteen, the only student to complete her high school matriculation,
Miracle Girl
, as she had heard some of the younger ones call her, their voices a mixture of reverence and disdain. She opened her eyes.

Two pinpoints of light, two distant stars moving closer, their rays pricking her skin. She could just make out a shape.

“Mama?”

No, the eyes of some kind of animal. A wolf, its coat luminous. And behind the wolf, something else. No, someone else. A man, his every step a dance, his right foot graceful as a spruce bough sweeping the ground, his left foot, uneven rain. He came towards her, his long black hair swinging through the night.

“Papa?”

He wore the shirt Naasa Tallow, Grandmother, had made for him, the one he always put on when he did his medicine—his power shirt. It was sewn from a wolf hide with a fur collar, but new now, not chafed and stained as it had been when she was a little girl. Beads rippled across the chest in bright patterns, shooting small moons against the wall. In his hand, an eagle feather.

“Papa!” she cried.

His spirit, too big for his body, flared from his skin, and a smoky updraft carried her high. Below was her bed, and beyond that, all the other beds with all the other students collapsed in sleep. In just three days, they would be gone for the summer.

Heavens, there at the edge of the room hovered the shadow people, that nun and that priest who still slunk through St. Mark’s, but since she had told on them—her confession that became the Visitation
—just ghosts, like the students who had died—shapes at the edge of her sight, sometimes milky, sometimes simply smoke in the process of dissipating.

“Take them, Papa. Those shadow people.”

Papa stretched out his eagle feather, and from the side of the dorm the shape of Sister Mary of Bethany straightened. She took the form of flesh in a black habit, a bunched-up white apron, almost real again. As the priest raised his dark head, the wound on his cheek, a ragged red crevice, caught the light and burned to a thin white scar. Sister Mary of Bethany and Father Damien crept to the pool of starlight around Papa—Blessed Wolf—and the blessed white wolf beside him.

Right through her, Rose Marie felt light shoot, flooding all the dark twists, nests, and tunnels the fire worms had burrowed over the years. It incinerated their small corpses.

Now the wolf grew through the dormitory, and Papa did too. They took over the large dark room, the dissolving shapes of the shadow sister and priest, shimmering through the walls and ceiling, falling upwards.

Warm, euphoric, and sleepy, Rose Marie closed her eyes and drifted down to her bed.
Good night, Papa.

The next morning she wondered what, exactly, had taken place. The dorm felt different, as if a warm wind had blown through it, sweeping dust, tears, sickness, and death away. The shadow nun and the shadow priest were gone. Banished. Her restlessness and
blue
were gone as well.
Dear Lord, let this last forever.

  *  *  *  

At the start of class, when Sister Joan instructed her to lead the senior girls in the Lord’s Prayer, she made a choking sound and pointed at her throat. In fact, she felt a pressure on her larynx just the size of a wolf paw—a sign, she decided, to remain silent. Besides, she wasn’t sure what her dream, or whatever it was, meant.

If it was bad, if Papa had died and come to her as Mama had done so many years before when she died, then Mother Grace would be notified by the priest on Papa’s Reserve. And Mother Grace would tell her.
God Almighty, let it not be that.
But then, if it were possible that Papa
had
died and Mother Grace hadn’t yet been contacted, would she feel this reassured and loved, so whole?

She did not attend confession that Saturday. The practice had become unsettling rather than comforting ever since a young man with a rope at his neck had started to trail Father William, sometimes appearing next to him in the confessional. That had begun when she confessed to seeing Sister Mary of Bethany and Father Damien—the Visitation—what, four and a half years ago now? Oh dear, on occasion the young man appeared as a boy, small-boned with enormous eyes. Brown eyes bleeding
blue.
For the past few years, during confession, she had simply gone through her list of venial sins as quickly as possible and left. Father William didn’t seem to expect anything more.

But to do that now, right after Papa’s visit, seemed dishonest, and she didn’t want to disturb the sense of calm that enveloped her ever since that night. It came to her that if seeing Papa was just a dream, then it was a
healing
dream. In removing the shadow sister and priest, he had restored her.
Thank you, Papa.

  *  *  *  

As usual, she took advanced catechism with Mother Grace, whose mind seemed to be elsewhere. If Papa had died, Mother Grace would look at her differently, and, of course, tell her. Instead, she was preoccupied, forever glancing at the pile of growing and shifting correspondence on her desk. Rose Marie could see from the letterhead that most of it was from the Mother House.

The students went home for the summer, but she wasn’t envious of them. In fact, she felt light and strangely worry-free, the debris of the past—fire worms and shadow people—swept away. Soon Papa would visit. Soon Mother Grace would tell her what was in store.

Content and confident, she went about her duties and did her chores without being reminded. Instead of sleeping in, she rose at first light and the second clang of Sister Joan’s bell, going downstairs with Sister Simon the Silent, as she had begun to think of her, for Matins.

G
OOD, YOU’RE HERE,
Rose Marie,” Mother Grace remarked as she entered the office. The reverend mother’s face was damp, and her sharp blue eyes darted nervously from her hands to the clock to Rose Marie, to the cross over the door, and back again.

“Please sit down. I have just sent Sister Simon off to borrow Sister Lucy’s suitcase for you. Father William is offering confession this evening. Then pack your things. Tomorrow you will be catching the Greyhound bus to a small parish west of Two Raven Pass, where you will serve.”

“Pardon me?”

“
Oui, chérie
, it’s all arranged. Sit down. Sister Simon also has some gumboots for you, Sister Bernadette a raincoat. They’re closest in size to you, though I don’t doubt their things will still be large.”

“I don’t understand, Mother Grace.”

“I’ll explain,
chérie
.” Finally Mother Grace looked right at her, sighing deeply. “There’s a procedure you must follow—a formality, really—in order to realize your destiny as a Sister of Brotherly Love.”

“Procedure?” She could feel her newfound calm crack.

“Before going to the Mother House as a novitiate, it is required that you work in a parish for three months.” Again Mother Grace sighed deeply, her eyes clouding. “You will be under the guidance of Father Patrick, a dear friend of mine and a true man of God. You’ll be helping out. He has a housekeeper, I understand, but you will, no doubt, be called upon to assist—”

Oh dear. Something was wrong. Mother Grace’s words had started to balloon from her mouth like wreaths of smoke. “Mother Grace?” Her eyes burning, Rose Marie blinked rapidly, overcome by a wave of panic.

“After the three-month period, you will return to us. Then you will travel to the Mother House—”

The sound was breaking up. Grey letters spilled from between Mother Grace’s lips.

“I can’t hear—”

A stream of letters. Oh, and Rose Marie tried to read those letters, but she couldn’t keep up, her heart pounding, the shapes blackening like burning matchsticks, colliding and breaking apart. “What did—”

More burnt matchsticks.

“—you say?”

Mother Grace closed her mouth, a look of alarm on her face.

“Something’s wrong, Mother Grace. I can’t hear!” Oh, not even her own voice! She clamped her teeth down on her lip to stop the tears.

Mother Grace touched her hand. The rustle of her habit was soundless black splinters, but she felt the old fingers. Like paper, thin and crinkly as always, with that whisper of warmth. Yes, comforting. She choked down a mouthful of air.

“Rose Marie, are you all right?”

“Oh. Thank goodness, I can hear again!”

“I’m sorry,
chérie
. This is a shock, I can see. I should have said something before, but I was hoping you could go straight to the Mother House. Most orders don’t have such a long waiting period. I’m afraid this is one I suggested myself years ago, after Sister Mary of Bethany—” Her eyes glittered. “It was a mistake! At the time, I thought such a practice would stop young women not suited for the religious life—
Mon Dieu
, the Mother House adopted it as policy.” Mother Grace’s eyes fluttered closed.

“For the past six months,” she continued, patting Rose Marie’s hand, “I’ve been seeking an indulgence for you. I didn’t want to upset you, so I didn’t mention the matter, but truly, I thought our Mother Superior would grant one, given your
special circumstances
.” She opened her eyes. “
Non
, she made it very clear it was not to be. You must think of your separation from St. Mark’s as your
assignment
. When it is done, God will return you, and you will follow your destiny. Have faith, Rose Marie. This is, as I’ve said, just a formality. The Lord provides. Not always in the manner we expect, but
the Lord provides
.”