The Divine Economy of Salvation (12 page)

Relenting, I took her hand, cool with perspiration and stronger than my own, and came out of the darkness. Rachel's breath was hurried.

“Did you see . . . see his thing?” she asked, her eyes wide, glistening in the candlelight.

“No. I don't think so.”

“Too dark?”

I nodded.

“Oh well,” she sighed. “Maybe next time.”

Then she whispered in Caroline's direction, “Funny little thing, it throbs. Beats like a heart and then just bursts.” Rachel made an exploding motion with her hands. “My legs are wet,” she added uncomfortably.

Caroline giggled and grabbed my arm as I tried to make out Rachel's legs. I couldn't see where the wetness was, but suspected it had escaped from her insides when his thing exploded.

“Let's get out of here,” Caroline said quietly, and Rachel opened the door to her room, her body barring the view to her bed.

I took Rachel's hand one last time, stroking it gently as I did my mother's when she was in pain.
I want to take this away from you,
I thought, without knowing why. Rachel didn't seem upset, and neither did Caroline, but I felt as if she had just suffered a wound, a wound that would open up in the coming months instead of clotting, a wound without the possibility of healing. Meanwhile, Rachel radiated a new power, even in her awkward steps, her tentative movements. She seemed to be floating.

The stringent scent of the hallway carpet and walls assaulted me as we moved towards our rooms. As each room number greeted us, I thought about the secrets trapped within their walls, wondered what had occurred in each of those rooms before we entered them or while we slept. Were the other girls engaged in similar acts or worse ones? Did we have nightmares because of them, their
whispers and smells permeating the air, wafting forcefully into our dreams?

“She'll probably feel sore tomorrow,” Caroline whispered conspiratorially as we reached the door to her room. “That's what Aimée told me happens your first time.”

I assumed Caroline had been misinformed. Rachel had done this before, though not in front of us. Did it hurt more if people knew and saw what you did? Was there a first time for that? “First time? What do you mean ‘first time'?” I asked.

“The first time you do it,” Caroline said, turning her back to me to twist the door handle.

“But Rachel told me she did it before.” I was raising my voice, and Caroline fumbled with the handle, jiggling it in annoyance.

“Shhh. You want to get us caught?”

“But she told me—”

“She told me that too, but a couple of days ago she admitted she hadn't. She thought I was lying that I had never done it. She thought I'd done it with the delivery boy. But I asked my sister what it's like so I told her. Aimée says the boy has to pull out.”

As Caroline went into her room, tears welled in my eyes. “Good night,
petit chou
,” she said warmly, closing the door, leaving me alone and disoriented. And yet I did not wish to be with anyone, least of all Rachel or Caroline. Even if my mother had invited me to return home at that very moment, I'm not sure I would have. Everyone seemed to possess knowledge I didn't. When would I no longer be in the dark? I climbed into my bed,
the perfect size for one, and slipped on my warmest, thickest nightgown. The cloth around my body like a bandage. I tried my best to sleep, unsure whether Rachel had offered me a gift or a burden.

WHEN I WOKE UP
in the morning, I saw the blood. The first thing I thought to do was phone home, but there was no answer. If Sister Aline hadn't been sitting nearby, I would have slammed down the receiver. I knew what it was, my stomach bloated and cramping. The other girls frequently rattled on about their periods to each other in the washroom, but it was my first one, and I wanted my mother to come and help me. She had bought me a belt and the proper bulky paper pads, which I had packed, and yet, like an infant, I wanted her to strap them on, make me smell sweet like talcum powder, hold my stomach as I slept, like I held her hand sometimes when she was in pain. Why was it when I was in pain there was no one to help me?

Dismayed by the endless ringing at the other end of the line, I sought refuge in the washroom, stripping off my nightgown and showering. The hot water stung my skin, and I scrubbed my thighs rigorously as if cleaning a stained carpet. Luckily it was Saturday and I didn't need to go to class, only to choir practice in the morning. It was meant to keep us Leftovers busy and out of trouble, even
though we could in fact accomplish very little without Bella. We practised notes and breathing techniques; songs just didn't carry when Bella wasn't present to guide us. The last thing I wanted to do was sing, but I didn't want to draw attention to myself by missing practice, so I waited for Esperanza to enter the washroom on her morning rounds. I hid myself in the shower stall, listening to a couple of girls come and go, water running, teeth brushing, and morning chatter. I heard Rachel say her father would take a few of us to the movies tonight; a new picture was showing at the theatre in the Market. A fresh white towel wrapped under my armpits, I watched the lingering drops of water spiral into the drain, my feet growing colder on the wet, beige-tinted tiles, and thought about my blood mingling with the dirt and sewage of the city streets like a dirty secret, travelling back to the canal.

Finally I heard the rustle of the hamper and the depositing of the washroom garbage into a bag. Through the curtain, I saw Esperanza in her grey uniform, starched stiff as living-room curtains. She bent over the sink, and her long skinny arms like cleaning brushes grazed over the floor, picking up stray towels and facecloths.

“Esperanza,” I called from behind the curtain.

She looked up, her face in the mirror, her eyebrows arched in confusion, trying to decipher the direction of the noise. She had not noticed anyone was in the washroom; she inspected the vent.

“Esperanza, please,” I said again, and she ventured over to the shower stall, abandoning her baskets and her grey cart with the tiny wheels on the bottom that she dragged up and down stairs and
along hallways. Her body was older than she was, her hands wrinkled from astringents and cleaners, the skin on her fingers calloused. A couple of the girls called her witch behind her back, for the way she rubbed her hands together with lotion as if casting a spell; some also teased her by anglicizing her name to Esther, which made her scowl. She approached, not with friendly concern, but not with disapproval either. The pockets of her eyes were deep, and I imagined she saw right through me.

“What do you want? I don't have extra shampoo to give you.”

I held out my nightgown to her, displaying the bloody stain, a deep reddish-brown splatter like rust. “Do you think this will come out?” I asked, close to crying, as if I had wet my bed in the night and were showing her my sheets.

“Sure. What do you want to give me for it?” she responded instantly.

I hadn't thought of that, but I knew Esperanza didn't do any favours for free. Still, I half expected, with an entire school of young girls, that my request would be a fairly common one, not one that required immense secrecy, although due to my innocence in these matters, I wasn't sure. Again I wished for my mother, who should have been beside me, who could have helped me wash the stains herself. The idea that I'd never experienced a period before might not have crossed Esperanza's mind. It was probably the shame emanating from my washed body that made me suspect.

“Rachel's father is taking us to the movies tonight. Do you want to come?”

Esperanza leaned back against the stall door, her light-brown
skin dull in the brightness of the bathroom, twisting my nightgown in her hands. She had never accompanied us to the movies before, but I knew she wanted to go, had seen her regard Rachel's father longingly as he left with a bunch of girls down the street, his stride fatherly and grand.

“All right,” she said, and placed the nightgown underneath some white towels in her basket, hiding the stain. She was shaking her head, waiting for me to get dressed maybe, to leave her alone and go to choir practice like the others. I was going to be late. As she opened the door to leave, her cart squeaking on the wet floor she had just sprayed with cleaner, she threw back her head and laughed.

“Your friend Rachel's very strange,” she said. “Paying me off to bring a boy up for you. For you!” Her head bobbed faster up and down in laughter as Patrick's body had against Rachel.

Rachel's father accompanied the girls to dinner in the cafeteria that evening, promised us ice cream after the movie, and advised we skip dessert. He sat with the nuns instead of with us, discussing plans for the Christmas pageant with them. There was no lineup to speak of on the weekends, so we quickly received our plates of food and headed to a distant table. The women who worked in the cafeteria were immigrants, newly arrived in Canada, and many were Chinese. They spoke little English and no French, and we simply pointed to the potatoes and beans, ham or fish that we wanted on our plates.

“My father says they were traitors in the war,” Rachel said.

“I think those were the Japanese,” Francine muttered between mouthfuls. “And not the ones in Canada.”

“No matter,” Rachel claimed. “They are all going to hell anyway. They're not Christian, you know. None of them are going to get into heaven. My father says so, no matter how many dishes they make for us. Besides, they get paid for it, it's no act of charity.”

Considering what Rachel said about her father's dislike for the Chinese, I was surprised at the kind and polite manner in which he dealt with them. He even joked in their company, playfully poking an elbow into a rib, slipping a few quarters to them over the countertop. From the bank, he would bring Rachel a whole roll of quarters, wrapped in brown bank paper, at the beginning of each week, which she would unroll carefully, hiding the coins in her drawers, in socks and shirts, in envelopes. It was from these rolls that she could afford to buy cheap jewellery or makeup from Woolworth's, or get us cigarettes and candy from the delivery boy. Every time she took out a quarter, she wove it in and out of her fingers like a magician, a trick she had learned from her father. In his heavy pockets, you could see the bulge of other rolls, dimes and nickels, that he kept close to treat us at candy machines or to dispense as little prizes when we pleased him. Rachel walked beside her father as if he were God, her eyes orbiting him, and the rest of the girls privileged enough to be on her list of friends followed suit. And he looked the way I imagined God would, towering over even Mother Superior, whose face relaxed as much as it was able to in his
presence. He had made large donations over the years. The school couldn't have continued without him. When in his presence, one felt honoured to be received.

Rachel knew the power her father possessed. His frame was robust, large around the chest, and he sometimes wore his dress shirts open a button, where crisp brown hairs protruded like dried grass from the collar. The hair on his head, parted perfectly to the right, was a slightly darker auburn than that of his beard and moustache. He wore large navy blue blazers with silver buttons and solid-coloured silk ties and he smelled of money. When he would sit beside me, his thick musk cologne filled my nostrils, reminding me of my father before my mother got sick and he stopped wearing anything that might aggravate her lungs or sting her eyes. Rachel's father called me Angel when I pleased him, in a lingering Irish accent that made his sentences seem like short songs. He loved movies and enjoyed taking the girls on weekends to see them. Sometimes we would see the same movie two or three times if we liked it. Mr. M. didn't care what kind of movie it was, as long as we wanted to go with him. He easily forgot which movies we had seen, but he could remember in exquisite detail what we had worn. The best days, like that day, we would be giddy with excitement to see the new film advertised in the paper, for the nuns rarely let us watch the single television in the recreation room. We expected spies and intrigue, death and murder, sex and love—the bright colours of the adult world we hoped to be entering.

When Mr. M. arrived, Mother Superior and the nuns swarmed around him, displaying the new banners for the church or
the classroom textbooks they had purchased with his last donations. He nodded vigorously as if he adored each new item, exclaiming in brassy tones, “You ladies are really outdoing yourselves this time.” Sister Marguerite, so pale she was practically transparent, would turn a deep red and fumble with the object she was holding. He also supplied the nuns with blankets, the crocheted afghans Rachel's mother made—between one and three in a week. The nuns loved them; each had their own, and they would keep extras for the girls and guests, donating the older ones when they became worn to the Salvation Army. Once Mr. M. had even offered to take all the nuns to the movies and out for ice cream, but they refused. He brought back a small tub of vanilla. “They can't get offended by the colour white,” he joked, and Mother Superior accepted it kindly. I imagined the delicious pleasure the nuns must have had dipping their spoons into the soft cream and savouring the sugary taste that night, their habits stripped off and their hair running along their shoulders, tucked into warm beds with their reading lights turned on or gathered together in Mother Superior's quarters the way The Sisterhood gathered in Rachel's room.

I was late to meet the girls after dinner, trying to get myself accustomed to the sanitary belt, practising the quickest and cleanest manner to get it on and off.

“You're usually the first one out, Angela. Angel?” Mr. M. called. “What's keeping you? Choosing the right shoes?”

He always treated the girls like budding women, tormenting us with jests that we had secret boys in our lives whom we were dressing to impress, that this was the reason we went to the movies.
“Not to be with an old man like me,” he would say, “that's for sure.” But Rachel was the only one who had actually spoken to a boy on any of our outings with her father, and I was sure he knew nothing about it. When Mr. M. was around, we gave him our undivided attention.