Authors: Joan Crate
“Get back here!” Sister Joan yelled, her head popping from the door, arm waving.
Rose Marie started running for the big front door.
“Sister Cilla,” Sister Joan yelled. “Get her!”
Oh dear, Sister Cilla with her long legs coming down the stairs. Rose Marie sped up, but with a jump and two long lopes, Sister had her by the nape. She tried to shake Sister off, but she held her the way Mama did when she wanted her to “stay still a minute, eh?” The way Aunt Angelique had when she made her take the bus to this stupid old school. Sister Margaret and Sister Joan did it too. They all grabbed her tight by the neck and made her do what she didn’t want to!
As Sister marched her back to class, Rose Marie looked up from the corner of her eye. Sister Cilla didn’t even seem mad. Her cheeks were pink and she was almost-smiling. Maybe Sister
liked
chasing her. Maybe all Sister Cilla wanted was to run down the halls as fast as she could and never ever stop.
At the back of the classroom, Sister Joan made her turn her hands up just like she had with Martha the week before when she couldn’t stop laughing. Sister whacked Rose Marie with the pointer, whacked until her palms were screeching
ow, ow, ow!
But, unlike Martha, she didn’t cry.
* * *
The next day, the sun was just an old yellow scab stuck on the classroom window. Rose Marie wanted to peel it off and find the real sun underneath, bright and warm. She swayed in her desk, trying to calm the fire worms burning her tummy.
Sister Joan pulled a long skipping rope out of her desk drawer. “Fine!” She marched up the aisle, shoved Rose Marie against the back of her seat, and wrapped the skipping rope around her, tying her to the desk. “There. And if I hear a sound out of you, Rose Marie, I’ll tape your mouth shut too!”
Fine
, she thought to herself.
When Sister Joan was writing numbers on the board—
4, 5, 6
—she wiggled the rope loose. By
12, 13, 14
, she had slipped out of the coils. Taki gave her a
you’re gonna get it
look, but she didn’t care.
* * *
“Like greased lightning,” Sister Joan hissed to Sister Margaret in the hallway as they headed for lunch. “She dashed out to the schoolyard. Without a coat, of course. What am I to do with the little heathen?”
Mother Grace, coming out of her office, heard the venom in Sister Joan’s voice and wondered if she should intervene, possibly preventing a rash action on Joan’s part. It wouldn’t be the first time Sister Joan—nor Sister Margaret, for that matter—had overreacted to an unruly child. But both sisters could be difficult, Sister Margaret stubborn and Sister Joan so very defiant.
I’ll speak to them when I have the energy
, she thought as she made her way down the hall.
Later that day, she sat at her desk writing a funding request to the Oblates, who ran most of the Catholic residential schools, on behalf of Father David.
A child’s voice pierced her office door, and she dropped her pen. The sound seemed to be coming from the dining room or the kitchen. A student in distress? Probably one of the girls on supper duty had cut a finger while slicing carrots or perhaps burnt herself while lighting the stove. Surely the situation was being taken care of by one of the sisters.
But the noise persisted. There was something primal in it, some sort of feral outrage that caused a shudder to pass through her entire body. Perhaps an animal had come into the school and been caught by Brother Abraham, a small animal trapped and possibly injured, dangerous even. She should get up. She should hurry down the hall and find out just what was taking place. The cries continued, terrible, rising and falling. She sat unmoving in her chair, chilled to the marrow of her bones.
She should get up, but she felt poorly. She had a great deal of paperwork to take care of. She simply didn’t have the strength. Nor the motivation. The problem would very likely resolve itself.
* * *
Rose Marie lay on her bed, a lump of raw meat. A hammer pounded the left side of her skull just above her eye. Beds scraped across the floor, their springs crying out like small birds. From the high northwest windows, light pulsed, broke apart, and dropped on her, small punches blackening her eyes and jamming her down a dark hole. She fell.
* * *
Light blasted her awake. She heard the moan of an animal caught in Papa’s trap.
O Sacred Heart of Jesus, filled with infinite love, broken by our ingratitude, and pierced by our sins
, a nun prayed by her bed. She didn’t recognize the voice. When she opened her eyes, she saw it was that new nun, the one who always disappeared again, the one she saw backwards.
She drifted in and out of sleep, and the nun faded and returned, her voice a thread carried by air currents.
Take every faculty of our souls and bodies.
The prayer wafted her to a nest of hides she sank into, at home, home at last and not hurting.
* * *
Mother Grace floated above. Her papery hand blurred as it reached and touched her forehead. The hammer came down again, slamming her eye shut. Mother Grace and Sister Cilla made her sit up and, oh, pulled off her school dress.
“No, it hurts!”
“Sinopaki,”
Mama whispered.
Then that trapped animal again, a little fox moaning until the sky pushed down and stubbed her out.
* * *
Taki’s face was next to hers.
“Assa, assa!”
“Get away from her, Anne,” Sister Margaret ordered.
Other girls passed by her bed, staring with
oh my
eyes.
* * *
Her skull cracked under a weight, and water seeped in. Taki had placed something cold and wet over her eye.
“Rosie, please don’t make that sound.”
“Is she all right?” Sister Cilla asked, long fingers crossing her flat chest.
Taki pulled a scratchy blanket up to her chin.
“Don’t. It hurts,” she murmured.
“You talked, Rosie. Sister Cilla, she talked!”
* * *
Mother Grace came with a flashlight and stroked her aching hair. “How could she do this to you? Such a bright girl, she always says. Stubborn, but nevertheless—”
* * *
The dorm was dark, full of sleeping girls, but someone, something, was stirring. It pulled at her, wanting her to look up, to see.
Once, at home, when she was supposed to be asleep, she had felt the same need to open her eyes and peer out of her nest of skins. Mama was sewing in a circle of lamplight as she always did the nights Papa was away in the bush. A fire flickered from the mouth of the stove, lighting Mama and the rising-falling waves of her breasts and baby-belly, the glinting needle poking down and pulling up through the cloth—a warm sleepy song. She was about to settle back in her bed when she noticed something pouring through the air like thin milk, oh, just like the spirits she had seen flowing from birds caught in Mama’s snares, or the spurt of four-leggeds escaping Papa’s traps of steel and pain, leaving their bodies behind.
Heart drumming, she watched milk curdle into arms and legs. Not forming an animal or a bird but the shape of a lady. She looked over at Mama, who hadn’t even noticed.
She wanted to call,
Mama, watch out
, but the lady-shape was filling with colour. A dress—red, blue, and yellow, gathered at the waist with a brass-studded belt that glittered crazily in the lamplight. A face. Like Mama’s, but older, thinner, and there, painted with a white streak down the nose, yellow slashes across the cheeks and a red sun on the forehead. She watched the lady-shape glide across the room to Mama.
Mama raised her head. She gasped. “My mother!” Then a murmur: “How I miss you.”
Goose pimples shivered up and down Rose’s arms.
“Not yet,” Mama whispered, her voice dropping so low that Rose could hardly hear. “I’m not ready. You must go alone.” Mama straightened in her chair, her needle held upright. “Mother, go alone.”
And
sta-ao
, the shadow spirit, faded away.
Here in the cold school, in her hard bed with rusty springs, in her pain, Rose Marie did not want to look up and see
sta-ao
. “No, no, no.” She crawled under her blanket, her breath fast as sparrows flitting through trees, small black bruises shifting ache from one part of her body to another. But that pull, that
look up
call. Rose Marie raised herself on an elbow and peered towards the entrance.
There. She was right under the light, that sister who appeared and disappeared—young and kind of pretty, dressed in the same habit the other sisters wore. She had tied an apron around her waist just like Sister Bernadette, but she had pulled her habit over the apron, making it shorter so that the curvy part of her lower legs showed. The sister, Rose Marie could see, wasn’t tall like Sister Cilla, but taller than Esther who wasn’t really her cousin. Now the sister walked to the door, her skirt swaying from side to side just like Esther’s always did. Oh, and she turned to nothing.
* * *
The following morning, right after Matins, Mother Grace made sure Rose Marie was doing as well as could be expected. She gave her an aspirin with a little water and then climbed down the two flights of stairs to her office. Something had to be done about the beating. But what exactly had taken place?
Sister Bernadette knew. Bernadette’s eyes had burned bright at supper, worry creasing her forehead. She had stared at her food, unable to eat.
“Does anyone know the whereabouts of Sister Joan?” Mother Grace had asked.
All the sisters shook their heads, not one of them meeting her eyes.
She drew her shawl around her. Yes, something definitely had to be done. Bruises were already beginning to appear on the girl. She would be as spotted as a calf by the afternoon. The worst of it was the goose egg over her left eye, an eye that seemed to lose focus when she drew near and the child tried to look at her. If only she had been more decisive the previous morning, had responded as soon as she had heard the cries.
God, forgive me
.
A light tap on her office door. As Sister Bernadette stepped in, what flitted through Mother Grace’s mind was
The mountain has come to Mohammed
. “Yes, Sister?”
“I guess Rose Marie was a nuisance yesterday,” Sister Bernadette said, sitting on the edge of the chair across from her. “You know, Mother Grace, swinging her head, grinning at her friend Anne across the room a few rows over, fidgeting in her seat, the things she does. We all know how she can’t sit still.”
“Go on, Sister.”
“Well, Sister Joan got it in her head that Rose Marie was mocking her.”
“Mocking her?” Mother Grace leaned forward, wincing at the jabs of pain in her elbows.
“You see, Rose Marie’s behaviour is dreadful, but she always knows the answers to Sister Joan’s questions. Sister Joan got it in her head that the girl was making a joke of her”—Bernadette shifted in her seat—“her ‘honest endeavours.’ That’s how she put it.”
“You’d better tell me exactly what happened, Sister Bernadette.”
The sister adjusted her skirt. “I was heading back to the kitchen from the, you know”—she pointed behind her towards the toilet—“Mother Grace, and up ahead I saw them. Sister Joan had the girl by the ear and was hauling her to the kitchen. By the time I got there, she had the electrical cord from the cupboard—the one from the frying pan—in her hand, Mother Grace, and she was swinging it at Rose Marie, hitting her again and again. ‘Stand still!’ she kept shouting, and the girl did. She didn’t make a sound at first, so I thought it might not be hurting too much. Then she started making this noise, a terrible sound, and I said, ‘I think that’s enough, Sister Joan.’ She’s my senior, you know, but I did say, ‘You should stop now, Sister Joan.’ I did.” Sister Bernadette started to snivel.
“Do you have a hankie, Sister?”
Bernadette tugged one from her pocket and gurgled into it. “ ‘Get out of here,’ Sister Joan said to me. ‘This is none of your concern.’ She kept swinging the cord, and it made a sound, like, like
thunk
. ‘I’ll give you something to cry about, Rose Marie,’ she said. ‘And you, Sister Bernadette, stop squawking like a goddamned chicken!’ ” Sister Bernadette blew her nose. “The girl stumbled against my cutting block. She collapsed on the floor, and Sister Joan . . . Sister Joan, she kicked her, Mother Grace.”
“Kicked her?” Her office listed like a ship at sea.
“I stopped her, Mother Grace. I came to my senses, and I ran up and pushed Sister Joan away.” She dabbed her nose. “ ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child,’ Sister Joan said. Just like Sister Margaret’s always saying. Then she left.”
“And the child?”
“I wrapped ice in a tea towel and put it on her eye. Then I took her up to bed. I should have put her in the infirmary, I know, but she could barely walk.”
“Why did you not come to—”
“I know. I should have come to you, but she fell asleep immediately and I didn’t want to move her. I didn’t want to make trouble.” Sister Bernadette gurgled into her hankie again.
“One doesn’t let someone with any kind of head injury fall asleep, Sister.”
“Oh dear, Mother Grace. But she looked so peaceful. I checked her, just to make sure—”
“The child was breathing?”
“Yes.”
Spineless
, Mother Grace thought. Then she wondered if she would have done anything differently. In fact,
she
had sat in her office and done nothing, absolutely nothing. “Tell Sister Joan I want to see her.”
Sister Bernadette left her office, still snivelling.
Mother Grace was nervous about talking to Sister Joan; she couldn’t deny it. She turned to the pile of bills on her desk, but when she tried to total the figures, she lost count. On the fourth attempt, she simply picked them up and threw them in her file cabinet. Her palms were damp. What was taking Sister Joan so long? She shuffled a pile of books over to the bookcase, checked the date and phases of the moon on her calendar, and returned to her desk. Her hands were so damp she had to keep drying them on her skirt. Her nails were a disgrace, she noticed. She sat down and was rummaging through her desk for a nail file when she heard Sister Joan clear her throat.