Authors: Axel Blackwell
Life at The Saint Frances de Chantal Orphan Asylum was a study in monotony and exhaustion. Days bled into weeks and weeks into months. The routine had become a horrible opiate, hypnotizing the little workers until thoughts were muddled, individual personalities were ground down and nothing was said or done or thought, except for ‘the next thing that must be done.’
In this state, months had slipped away without Anna noticing. Seasons had come and gone and come again while she had no sense of their passage. But now, with the key wearing a blister on her sole and a hole in her sock, every hour felt like days. Every cruel word, every lash of the crop seemed an insufferable evil. The five days felt to her like a sentence far greater than the four more years she had been expecting to live in the Asylum.
During dinner, three days after Anna’s encounter in the pipe, Lyla announced there had been a death on her hall. Lyla was one of the other head girls. She claimed to be Italian, but Anna had overheard Sister Eustace say that she was half Negro, “which is why they sent her to us rather than to one of the favored institutions. Her white mother is still alive, probably the father, too. But what would they have done with a
thing
like that?”
It didn’t matter to Anna what Lyla was. In here, everyone was equally wretched.
“Amy caught cold on the night we had no blankets,” Lyla explained. “There was never much to her to begin with, and she wasn’t able to eat the next day. Then, she got the pneumonia, I guess, started coughing so much. When we woke this morning, she was gone.”
Lyla told the story without emotion, as if she were reporting the number of shoes she had boxed and crated that day. Anna knew the inner distress she felt, and knew the danger of admitting sorrow in a place like this. She had lost more than one little girl in her care, and she had expected to lose more. Maybelle, the mute who had been added to her fold just a few days ago, probably wouldn’t last the year. But Anna planned to be long gone before she lost another one.
“They buried her at sea while we were working today,” Lyla continued. “She had always wanted to go on the boat. She wanted to see the ocean, again. I guess we all get to ride on that boat at least one more time.”
“I saw the ocean,” Anna said. “Sister Eustace has a balcony off of her office that overlooks it.”
“We all saw the ocean, Anna, when we came here,” Jane said.
“But I saw it just three days ago. It was beautiful,” Anna said. “When I leave here…”
She stopped. The other girls looked at her with a mix of wonder and disgust. Every child in the building would have sold their soul to escape Saint Frances, but only the little ones, or the perpetually stupid, expressed a hope of ever leaving.
Jane bailed her out, but only after letting her fumble for words and come up short. “She has been behaving very oddly ever since Sister Elizabeth hit her in the head with a shovel.”
Lyla nodded, still eyeing Anna. The other girls relaxed a bit.
“It was a trowel,” Anna said. “I only meant to say that I would like to swim in the ocean someday.”
Cheryl, a redheaded head girl with more pimples than Jane, and fewer teeth, choked on her fish stew. “Anna! That’s horrible! Every child that ever died here has been dumped out there.”
“Yeah,” added Jane, “and all the sisters, too.”
“Never mind,” Anna mumbled. She spooned chunks of fish out of the thin broth.
“Just think of all those bodies bobbing around down there,” Cheryl said.
“Cheryl, please!” Lyla said, her eyes glistening with moisture. “When they go into the water, the Lord takes them,” Lyla insisted.
“My parents were buried at sea,” Ester, the oldest of the head girls, said, “and the Lord took them. And that is all we will hear of that.”
The girls fell silent. Anna wondered if the Lord had taken her baby brother when he went into the water. She thought it was probably different with bathtubs. Would the Lord have taken Sister Elizabeth if Anna had flushed her down the drainage pipe? Would He have taken Anna? She felt the key pressing against the bottom of her foot and decided that didn’t matter anymore.
The following morning at breakfast, the new sister was among the nuns serving the meal. Anna startled, suddenly remembering Sister Dolores, the spy. So much had happened down in the cisterns, Anna had completely forgotten the conversation she had overheard.
The conversation that almost killed me
, she thought.
The conversation that almost made me a killer
. But, here was Sister Dolores now, who was not what she claimed or appeared to be.
Sister Dolores had the look of a dog who had been beaten its whole life, yet still yearned to please its master. She hopped eagerly to the demands or requests of the other sisters and forced a smile in reply to every comment. As Anna watched her, however, Sister Dolores looked up from the cauldron of porridge she was stirring and locked eyes with Anna. A true smile spread easily and warmly across the sister’s narrow lips. Anna felt a sudden embarrassment for staring, as well as some deeper uneasiness.
Sister Dolores straightened her back, still smiling at Anna. She reached into her habit and very deliberately fingered her crucifix. Anna copied her gesture, coming up with her mummified pinky rather than a silver cross. Sister Dolores’s smile twisted just a little, taking on a knowing, satisfied appearance. She casually looked away from Anna, back to the cauldron, reacquiring her subservient posture.
She
is
a spy! What did they think was her purpose here? Did they know?
Anna couldn’t remember, except that she may have come to rescue someone. Obviously, Sister Dolores knew something about Anna.
Is she here to rescue me? How would she even know me?
Anna couldn’t begin to imagine.
“Anna!” Jane snapped.
Anna looked up to see all five of the other head girls staring at her. She glanced around, confused.
“Put that thing away,” Jane said. “What has gotten into you?”
Anna was still holding her finger. She stuffed it back into her dress, then bent over her porridge and did not look up again. She spooned the sludge into her mouth and thought about Sister Dolores, the spy.
I have to warn her
.
No, stay out of it
.
If she is here to rescue me, and they catch her…
You don’t need her help, you have the key.
That’s right, I am leaving tonight, I can risk warning her. Abbess McCain won’t find out until after I am gone.
If you warn her, she will want to know how you found out. If you tell her, she might turn you in.
But if I don’t warn her… What if she was the one who left the key?
How could she have done that?
How could anybody? But if she is the one helping me escape, and she gets caught…
The whistle blew, signaling the end of breakfast. Anna surveyed the hall. Hundreds of children shuffled into rows. The racket and clatter of feet and benches and tin utensils filled the vaulted chamber. Most of the sisters collected in the kitchen behind the stone archways separating it from the hall. Sister Dolores dragged a mop bucket across the floor toward the hall’s exit.
Anna grabbed Lizzy’s sleeve and whispered, “You take the girls to the factory, Lizzy, I’ll be right behind you. “
“Anna, no,” Lizzy whispered.
“Do it, Lizzy. I promise I will be there in no time.” Anna darted off before Lizzy could protest further.
She hurried along the wall, as inconspicuously as possible, toward Sister Dolores. The nun mopped around a section of floor near the corner. She was out of view of the rest of the nuns. Anna had never seen the sisters mop the dining hall. But, then again, she had never lingered in the hall after the whistle.
The key in Anna’s shoe had worn the skin away in two places, and she couldn’t completely hide her limp as she scurried toward Sister Dolores. When she was close enough to whisper, the nun looked up from her mopping. She looked first puzzled, then annoyed.
“Why aren’t you at the factory?” She demanded.
Suddenly, Anna decided this was a bad idea, a very bad idea. She turned for the door.
“Wait a minute. You stand right there. I asked you a question,” Sister Dolores said. “Why did you not go to the factory with the other children?”
Anna tried to speak but couldn’t think of any words, at least not any words for Sister Dolores. For herself she thought,
stupid, stupid, stupid…
“You came to tell me something,” Sister Dolores said. “What is it?”
Anna’s mouth bobbed open and closed like a clubbed salmon. She halfheartedly pointed toward the door. Finally, a thought came to her, from Jane, of all people.
Tell her you get really confused ever since Sister Elizabeth hit you in the head.
She said, “I get…” and abruptly stopped.
Sister Dolores’s dull blue irises blurred and suddenly turned black. They faded to purple, then faded back to dull blue. “Tell me the truth.”
Without the slightest intention of doing so, Anna said, “Abbess McCain knows you are a spy!” She clapped her hand over her mouth.
“Who told you that?” Sister Dolores whispered, glancing quickly around the hall.
“I…” Anna surveyed the empty room, then studied Sister Dolores’s eyes. “I overheard Abbess McCain talking with another sister. I don’t know which one. Are you a spy? Are you here to rescue us?” Anna asked, blushing to the roots of her hair.
“Rescue you? Rescue you from what?” She sounded stern, but there was also something playful in her tone.
“Sister Dolores!” Sister Eustace’s voice boomed through the dining hall. “What are you doing?”
Sister Dolores’s posture slumped back to a cringe.
“Oh, and look here, it’s Anna, who wears her shame like a medal!” Sister Eustace continued. “Why are you not at the factory?”
Anna’s blush went paper white as she took up her mantra,
stupid, stupid, stupid…
“Oh, Ma’am,” Sister Dolores said, “Anna was only asking if she could have a bandage. Something seems to be wrong with her foot.”
Anna’s eyes popped and her heart sank. Sister Eustace looked at Anna’s shoe. Anna shot a pleading look at the younger nun. Mischief twinkled in Sister Dolores’s eyes and the corners of her lips raised. But before Sister Eustace returned her eyes to Sister Dolores, the young nun’s face fell back into its desperately eager and subservient mask.
“A bandage? Why would she be asking
you
for a bandage? Are you a nurse, Dolores? Is this the infirmary?”
“No… no, ma’am,” Sister Dolores said. “This is the…”
“
I
know this is the dining hall!” Sister Eustace yelled. “Why would this pest, ask
you,
for a bandage?”
“Ma’am, it is for her foot.”
“But why
you
?” she demanded, bellowing into Sister Dolores’s face.
Sister Dolores stared into her eyes, petrified.
“I’ll tell you why. This little wretch is playing you for a fool. She thinks you are weak. And do you know why she thinks you are weak? She thinks you are weak because you let her think so. I told you what kind of refuse we house here. These children will walk all over you with their lies and their scams. Worse than niggers and gypsies, all of them! Do not be taken in by her sniveling and her pitiful eyes. I don’t know
what
she’s up to, but I do know it’s no good! If she truly needed a bandage she would have asked
me
, or she would have gone to the infirmary. Are you listening to me, Sister Dolores?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Where is your crop?”
Sister Dolores drew the leather crop from her habit.
“Have you used it yet?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Well then, allow me to show you how it’s done.” Sister Eustace seized Sister Dolores’s left wrist. With the other hand, she snatched the crop, raised it over her head and lashed Sister Dolores’s knuckles. She struck so violently that Anna thought the crop would snap in half. Sister Dolores uttered a sobbing gasp. Her knees buckled and her eyes instantly filled with tears.
“Stand up,” Sister Eustace spat, “Now, you
know
that I am not weak, don’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sister Dolores said in a quavering voice. Sister Eustace held her wrist so tightly that the skin of Sister Dolores’s hand had turned white. A red and bright-purple ridge swelled diagonally across the back of Sister Dolores’s hand.
“You know that you cannot play
me
for a fool.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sister Dolores said, with a little more composure.
“Very good.” Sister Eustace smiled warmly and handed the crop back to Sister Dolores. “Now, you teach little Miss Anna the lesson I just taught you.”
The servility and pain in Sister Dolores’s eyes turned to cruel glee as she shifted her gaze to Anna. She rubbed the leather against her palm, smiled at it, even seemed to be whispering to it.
“Three lashes, Sister Dolores, one for lying about her foot, one for thinking you are a fool. And one for the pain she has caused you,” Sister Eustace said. “Anna, hold out your hand.”
Anna stretched her hand out. It tingled already in anticipation of pain.
Just focus on my hand and my lies and all my other little sins and forget about my shoe
. She thought, desperately.
I’m a wicked little girl and I don’t deserve a bandage. I didn’t even ask for a bandage. Lash my knuckles all you want, take another finger if you must, but leave my shoe alone.
She saw the hideous stripe across Sister Dolores’s hand and whimpered. She closed her eyes, and her thoughts changed
, this is the last time, this is the last time, this is the last time…