This is not to imply I embodied some sort of corruptive force in my youth—I am hardly the type to play the seductress—and perhaps it would be wise to mention at this point that when Adele and I met, I was her junior. She was sixteen and I was fourteen. Unlike me, she was not an orphan, but rather a girl who had come to the convent after waking up one morning and telling her mother she’d had a calling to devote her life to the Good Lord. Her mother acted very quickly on Adele’s proclamation and brought her straightaway to the nuns, who took Adele in on the condition she train for a few more years until she came of age and was of adult mind and body to take the vows she so longed to take. I overheard some of the nuns grousing one day about Adele’s mother (you might not think so, but nuns grouse, too—although they almost always dutifully repent shortly thereafter), criticizing the woman’s haste to dispense with her daughter’s room and board.
Very convenient on the household budget,
I recall hearing them say. But I’m not sure this was an accurate assessment of her mother’s motivations. I think the hastiness on the part of Adele’s mother to take action had less to do with economic convenience and more to do with the fact that Adele’s stepfather had begun “accidentally” popping into the washroom whenever Adele undressed to take her bath.
Adele told me about these unfortunate incidents one night when we were alone and it was very late. I remember being quite surprised by my own enraged desire to inflict bodily harm on a man I had never met. She never told me as much, but I think Adele made the mistake of also confiding her stepfather’s history of misbehavior to old Sister Mildred, because one afternoon they met for many hours in Sister Mildred’s tiny and often stale-smelling office that was adjacent to the schoolroom, and after that Adele was made to do a very long and exhausting penance of prayer and bathing and fasting “to cleanse her mind of impure thoughts.” That would be just like Sister Mildred—to blame Adele herself for the offense that had been done to the poor girl.
Sister Mildred was from a long line of matriarchs very practiced in the art of insinuating that no woman ever received advances she did not herself invite. Her ideas about the world were antiquated, crusty things, a series of notions that had all been nibbled about the corners. To tell the truth, I think it was not that little room but Sister Mildred herself who smelled stale, as she was nicknamed Mildred the Patron Saint of Mildew by the other orphans.
Even if Sister Mildred’s interpretation had been founded on something other than her own antediluvian assumptions about the world, I cannot think Adele ever intimated any desire for that loathsome man. I have heard Adele give her stepfather’s description in great detail, and I assure you, there is nothing in his description I can believe a young girl could possibly want to invite closer to her person.
Adele’s mother got her out of the house as quickly as she was able. Whether it was an act of feminine jealousy or maternal protection I cannot really say, as I have never met the woman. The fact remains that once she had delivered her daughter over into the capable hands of the Almighty, she never again visited the convent. I believe this left Adele feeling quite lonely. I don’t have any memories of my own parents, so I can’t say I understood exactly what Adele was going through, but I have a pretty good imagination, and I tried to demonstrate my sympathies by leaving little notes filled with words of encouragement and pressed flowers. In no time at all we were as thick as thieves.
Of course, there had been one incident in particular that caused me to realize for the first time how much I truly loved Adele. We were in the kitchen with Sister Hortense, kneading the dough that was to be eventually baked up and used for Communion, when Adele suddenly turned to me and said,
Rose, you have such a knack for this! The bread never comes out flat or mealy when you
’
re on the job. It rises perfectly. Just absolutely perfectly!
Naturally, an unbidden rosiness appeared on my cheeks underneath the light dusting of flour that had settled there. But Adele just smiled and babbled on amicably, as though her thoughts were a liquid she might pour into the bread to give it some additional friendly flavor.
Maybe you inherited the gift from your mother,
she mused,
or maybe your father
—
yes, just think: Maybe your father was a master baker! Oh, but that would certainly explain it!
Upon hearing this remark, Sister Hortense snorted loudly. Startled, Adele turned to look at her in surprise, but I was no fool. Long ago I had overheard the subject of my parentage being thoroughly parsed by the nuns. Time and time again, I’d heard them recall the evidence surrounding the circumstances that led to my entry into the orphanage. If the nuns’ stories were to be believed, my parents were hardly the downtrodden
malfortunates
that so famously populate the novels of Charles Dickens—which is to say, my birth was not the inconvenient result of a lovelorn encounter in a slum, nor was my time at the orphanage the result of my guardians’ having died tragically in a great house fire. They say fact is often stranger than fiction, but if you ask me, I believe truth has always been much more disappointing on this score. In the version of the truth I was told, my mother and father were a middle-class couple of relatively sound material prosperity. I suppose there was a decent enough chance my parents might have kept me and I might’ve been raised in the normal way, if my father had not contracted a certain venereal disease that one could only get by exposing oneself to a numerous variety of . . . well, I shall be frank and simply call them
ladies of the night
. As the nuns tell it, my mother “donated” me to the orphanage to spite him. She defied my father to try to retrieve me against her wishes. As far as I know, he never attempted to do so, leading me to conclude his fear of her wrath turned out to be extremely effective indeed. Her sense of justice was ruthless, but beautifully simple: If he wouldn’t be faithful to her, she would refuse to keep and raise his children.
Of course, I would’ve much preferred a tragic house fire to this tale of petty jealousy and spite. I admit, as orphan stories go, mine is a rather lackluster one, which leads me to believe the nuns did not make it up. The bassinet in which I was found attests to my parents’ middle-class standing, and my mother left a letter in the basket recounting the rather graphic details of my father’s transgressions, while tidily neglecting to sign her name or reveal her identity.
When Adele began speculating about the identity of my parents, Sister Hortense promptly educated her on the subject and gave an abridged account of my father’s misdeeds and my mother’s attempt to even the score. Sister Hortense was not one for coddling girls, and I suppose I ought to be grateful the nuns did not infantilize me by ever lying to me about my origins. Nonetheless, my lips could not help curling into a faint, pleased little smile when Adele exclaimed,
Sister Hortense, shame on you! How could you suggest anyone would willingly give up such a delightful and clever girl as Rose?
Then she turned to me, took my hand in hers, and said,
Truly, Rose
—
you must know this horrid story can
’
t be true; you
’
re worth much more than that.
Sister Hortense only rolled her eyes, wrapped the dough she’d been kneading in a damp cheesecloth, and placed the lumpy mass in the ice-box. But still holding Adele’s hand in my own, I could not have been more dizzy and affected than if I had just been knocked sideways by a wrecking ball. Something special was happening; a tiny door was opening inside my chest. I glimpsed a future wherein I would not always be alone, and I know Adele had glimpsed it, too.
I suppose after hearing Dotty’s inaccurate and depraved assumptions whispered in the kitchen downstairs and feeling my stomach churn, I got to reminiscing and realized I still missed Adele very much. I sat and thought about her, about her very brown eyes and the little crinkle that was always present on her forehead, and the way she used to sing whenever the nuns gave her work to do in the kitchen, and how her hands were perpetually chapped from all the chores she did, and how she could never remember to put on a scarf, and how she sometimes declined to carry an umbrella because she worried that wanting to keep her hair dry counted as an act of vanity. There was so much to remember, and I sat there lost in my reverie, remembering all the details.
I snapped to attention when the door opened and Helen let herself into the room. I realized I had been waiting for this to happen all along, sitting in apprehension and turning the pages of my book without really reading what was written on them. She looked extremely startled to see me just then, perched upon my bed and reading a book, and I think this gave me a slight feeling of smug satisfaction.
“Oh! You’re home!”
“Yes.”
“I—we . . . we didn’t hear you come in.”
“Mm.”
“Have you been home long?”
“I was allowed to take my leave for the afternoon,” I said, “on account of my working so hard.” I knew this was not an answer to her question, and I suppose I was hoping to needle her with my sidestepping of it. Let her worry about what vicious talk of hers I might’ve heard or not heard! Helen crossed the room to the vanity that straddled the curtained border of our two silently warring territories. I stared at her as she leaned down to catch sight of herself in the vanity mirror and nervously remove the hat pins still sticking out from her hatless hair.
“Home early—aren’t you the clever one?” She gave a forced little laugh, and her eyes flicked warily at my reflection in the mirror, then back to her own countenance. “Oh goodness! Just look at me! I look like I’ve been in the salt mines all day.” As she looked in the mirror, her body mechanically sank onto the stool that sat before the vanity, and she proceeded to fuss with her hair and pinch her complexion. I knew she was trying to ignore me, but I stared on mercilessly.
“I heard you and Dotty,” I said in a low, quiet voice. For a fleeting second, Helen’s eyelids fluttered and her mouth made a surprised little O shape.
Victory,
I thought.
Now she will have to grovel.
But just as quickly, an invisible automatic spring clicked into place and she regained her composure.
“Sorry? What was that, dear?” Her voice was breezy, saccharine. Perhaps she thought she was being politic, giving me a way to avoid the discomfort of direct confrontation. But I was not afraid. I pressed on.
“I said, I heard you and Dotty talking when I came in.”
She drew a sharp breath and something caught in her throat, causing her to give a little choking cough, which she struggled to control. “Did you?” she said with curious innocence after she’d managed to clear her throat. “Then you must’ve heard me going on about that dreadful girl Grace at the shop.” She tittered nervously. “So bad of me. You know I don’t like to gossip . . . but, well, I suppose we’re all guilty of it from time to time.”
“I didn’t hear you say anything about Grace. But I
did
hear you speaking of someone else.”
“Oh, well, I’m sorry, but I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She smiled—too widely. It was the craven smile of a nervous Dalmatian. Then she turned with a businesslike air and carried on grooming herself before the mirror. I couldn’t believe it. She was going to insist on playing the innocent! But she’d already shown her cards, as far as I was concerned, and I could see her hands shaking.
“I don’t suppose you’ve anything you think you ought to apologize for.” I heard the words come out of my mouth and cringed. I sounded like a prissy old schoolmarm, my own voice going up several unflattering octaves as I reached the end of the sentence. I thought of Mrs. Lebrun from my childhood, scolding me when I’d once put the silver away in the wrong drawer. But I didn’t care. Helen and I were in the open now, and I was ready for the relief of an all-out spat. I waited.
Helen turned to face me and blinked in feigned bewilderment. I recognized it again from the repertoire she often practiced in the mirror. “Oh!” she said, as though suddenly remembering something. “Why, yes, you’re right; I almost forgot.” She got up from the vanity, crossed to her armoire, and extracted something. “Here are your gloves back—I’m sorry I kept them so long.” With an air of generosity, she moved to hand me back a pair of burgundy-brown leather gloves I had not seen since last year. I did not remember loaning them to her. I had thought them lost, and before winter had rolled around I had scrimped together some money to buy a much less attractive replacement pair in gray.
Now Helen was dangling my long-lost gloves before my face. With white-hot indignation still smoldering just beneath my skin, I took the gloves, the weight and sheen of them like the very slender, slack bodies of two small trout. So this was how she was going to play things. I told myself I couldn’t be bothered any further to extract an apology from a girl who was too much of a weasel to admit when she was wrong. I turned and began to walk away. But then I changed my mind. It wasn’t fair, I thought, to be left alone with the injustice of it all. I was quaking with anger, practically shivering all over my body. I retraced my steps back to Helen with a stiff, automatic gait, almost like a windup doll.
I drew up close and stood squarely in front of her, our noses almost touching. She looked into my face with a benign smile. Then, as if someone had pulled the plug on an invisible drain, I watched the color leave her face. It was in that moment, I think, she began to comprehend exactly what I was about to do, and what I was capable of doing if she angered me further. Still with a stiff, automatic quality to my movements, I lifted the hand that held the pair of gloves and brought them swiftly through the air, whereupon they landed with a satisfying
SLAP!
across Helen’s cheek. Helen, for her part, began crying and carrying on immediately.
“You wretch!” she shouted bitterly at me. But I no longer heard anything. Calmly and deliberately, I pulled the gloves onto my hands. I fitted them neatly over each finger and exited the room with the notion of taking an evening walk.