The Divine Economy of Salvation (22 page)

“What did you get?” Mrs. M. asked her, holding her plastic cup to her lips. “Ouch!” she exclaimed, glaring at her husband.

“The coffee's lukewarm, Louise,” he said loudly when one of the Chinese women heard and ran quickly over to check if she had hurt herself. Mr. M. waved her off, asking her to make more tea for the table. “Don't you dare ruin this for your daughter,” he said quietly but not out of my earshot as he bent down and placed his palms squarely on his wife's shoulders.

“I haven't opened anything yet,” Rachel said, indicating the table piled with gift boxes and bags. “Can't you see?”

Mrs. M. clapped her hands. “Gordon,” she roared. “The girl hasn't opened any presents yet? It's her birthday!”

“It's a party,” he replied. “We open the gifts after everyone has finished the cake.” He pointed to my dessert, which I had barely touched. I smiled sheepishly and scooped another spoonful into my mouth. I too wanted to see Rachel open her presents. But Mrs. M. didn't seem to care about my unfinished cake.

“Says who?” Mrs. M. retorted, attempting to brush her hand across Rachel's hair, who in turn offered her a repellent curl of her lip.

“I say so, Mother,” Rachel replied. “This is the way we do things here.”

Mother Superior raised her finger. This gesture generally meant a warning of some sort. If a girl had overstepped her place,
the risen finger would indicate it was time to retreat before she caused any real damage requiring punishment. Rachel wiped her mouth with a napkin and rose abruptly from the table.

“Where are you going, dear? I just got here,” Mrs. M. pleaded, straightening the rose pin on her collar and flattening out her skirt with jittery hands.

“The washroom. And I don't need you to come with me.”

Rachel left, and Caroline followed, bowing down politely in front of Mrs. M. before excusing herself. “It's nice to meet you,” she said.

“Likewise,” returned Mrs. M., apparently pleased with Caroline's manners. She tried to swivel out of Mr. M.'s grip. “See how kind the girls are to me,” she said to him. “You see, they like me.”

“Oh yes,” he agreed, still holding her shoulders and rubbing them absently. “They are good girls.” He winked at me as he said this and I returned his gesture with a smile, happy he had singled me out. I also realized Esperanza had disappeared, and I was glad.

Meeting Mrs. M. was like meeting a rumour. Rachel did not speak of her often, but when she did, she did not speak kindly. She ridiculed her for never leaving the house and for the number of useless afghans she crocheted. “Your wife could open her own store,” Mother Superior said once when Mr. M. brought in an armful, a white one selected for my room. “Then I'd have two jobs, Mother,” Mr. M. replied. On one occasion, Rachel went so far as to claim she had no mother; she never got to see her and she didn't speak to her, so how could Mrs. M. possibly be a mother? “She's just a ghost,” she joked, “crocheting afghans in a rocking chair.” She made a good
point. There were times when I felt it would be easier to say I had no mother instead of explaining she was ill with a disease the doctors hadn't yet been able to identify. I often feared people thought my mother might simply have abandoned me. It wasn't an outrageous leap; I had begun to wonder myself whether Mrs. M. actually lived with Mr. M. And unlike Mrs. M., my mother had not revealed herself in the flesh at St. X. School for Girls to put speculation to rest.

Although I was finished my cake and my belly ached from the amount of food I had already eaten, out of politeness I did not wish to leave my place at the table to walk off some of the discomfort and use the washroom. I crossed my legs and waited anxiously to learn more about Mrs. M. The nuns watched her with anticipation too, as they might watch a pot heating to boil. She was offered a plate of chicken and potato salad and nibbled at it, laying down her fork each time she took a bite in order to sip her coffee.

“More, please,” she asked Sister Aline, holding up her plate with only half the potato salad gone and none of the chicken, the skin stripped and shoved to the side. Had one of the girls asked for a second helping before finishing what they had already taken, this request would certainly have been refused. However, Sister Aline walked into the kitchen where the leftovers were being wrapped and piled up Mrs. M.'s plate accordingly.

The girls were getting restless now that the dinner portion of the evening was over. They wanted Rachel to open her presents. Many of the girls were hanging around the designated table, picking up boxes and shaking them, weighing them in their hands,
pointing out the presents they had brought, whispering the contents into each other's ears. A girl in one of the younger grades who I'd once seen counting out pennies to get a bag of chips from a vending machine hadn't brought a present, and rushed upstairs to her room to find something of her own to give. She came back with a book wrapped in newspaper.

Mr. M. removed the knot from his tie and was about to sit back down when Rachel and Caroline returned. Caroline stood behind Rachel while Rachel whispered something to her father.

“I'll do my best,” was Mr. M.'s response, but he didn't exude confidence in his general way. He looked exhausted. He rolled up his tie into a ball and placed it in his suit jacket pocket.

“Are you feeling better?” he asked his wife, looking at his watch before placing his hands on her shoulders again. She turned and gazed up at her husband's face with bewilderment.

“Of course I'm fine. What are you implying?”

He removed his hands from her shoulders as Rachel joined the girls at the presents table. She practically ran, while Mrs. M.'s attention remained on her husband and the group at our table, including me and Francine, Sister Aline and Mother Superior. Mrs. M. wiped her nose with a handkerchief she pulled from the pocket of her purse. Caroline and I exchanged glances, unsure of whether we should stay until Mrs. M. finished eating or whether we should join Rachel, who hadn't waited for her mother. In fact, her mother hadn't touched any of the food Sister Aline had brought back from the kitchen, and I was beginning to suspect she really was ill and couldn't keep the food down.

“Do you think I don't know what's going on? What's been going on?” Mrs. M. said.

She was beginning to raise her voice now, and though I desired to leave the table because my bladder was almost bursting, I did not. Francine's kneecaps bumped nervously against the table underneath, creating a steady rhythm. She stared straight ahead, ignoring what was going on around her.

“Calm down, Louise. Don't ruin this for your daughter,” Mr. M. told his wife, wagging his finger accusingly, then resuming his stance, smiling broadly but with difficulty. “She'll be fine,” he told Mother Superior, who didn't budge.

“Do you think I can't hear you? That I don't know?”

Mrs. M. tried to rise, but Mr. M.'s hands bore down upon her shoulders, pushing her back into her seat. I did not know if she was alluding to what had gone on with Mr. M. and Esperanza, but I was relieved that at least Esperanza wasn't present. I tried not to look at Mr. M.'s rugged face, or his hair, or his hands now upon his wife, harsh and demanding in a way I'd never seen him touch a woman before. Not since being alone with him in my room, had I been afraid of him; I suspected he was in the wrong.

Mrs. M. hit her plate on the edge of the table with her arm and pieces of chicken and potato salad fell onto the floor. Bella walked by, on her way to get some punch, and with a swift gesture returned the plate to its position and bent down to pick up the food with a napkin.

Mrs. M. turned to touch Bella in thanks, but Mr. M. stood between them, creating a barrier with his broad-shouldered
body. Bella stood demurely, the dirty napkin in her hands.

“Would you like me to get you anything?” Bella asked, acting as if she hadn't noticed the anger between them. And it worked. Mr. M. was caught off guard by her good-natured grace. He let Bella approach his wife.

“No . . . no . . . thank you. I'm fine,” Mrs. M. replied.

Then Mr. M. laid his hand gently on Bella's back and told her it would be helpful if she went to join the other girls with the presents. Bella immediately obeyed and left the table. I was amazed by how Bella knew exactly the best way to behave, but it didn't surprise me. I inwardly chastised myself for being so slow and clumsy around the adults. I wished I could gain approval as easily as Bella could. “You too,” Mr. M. added to Francine and me. We took a couple of seconds to gather our cups and plates for the garbage. We had barely straightened up from our chairs when Mrs. M. began pleading.

“Don't leave me!” she screeched, banging her hands in front of her, spilling her coffee on her tartan skirt.

Mrs. M. was crying, and the girls and the nuns alike could not help but stare. My mother cried often, but it was when the pills weren't strong enough and her skin burned. She cried in small doses, the tears weaving slowly down her face, and her moans were private. She did not cry in front of strangers if she could help it, although once at a doctor's office I did see her leave with a fistful of tissue. Mrs. M., however, was crying loudly and her tears gushed down her face, smearing her rouge and black mascara. Her face went red, and her chin, with a tiny extra layer of flesh underneath the cleft, pulsed
with each sob. She clutched her handkerchief in her right hand, slamming her arms down into her lap, repeatedly stabbing at the coffee stain. Mr. M. said nothing, the way a parent might whose patience has been tried and who will simply wait for a tantrum to end. Mother Superior, her large frame now bent over Mrs. M. like an awning, tried to quiet her.

“Think of the children, Louise. Sister Marguerite will take you to lie down so you can collect your strength.”

But Mrs. M. ignored Mother Superior and lashed out at the decorations on the table. She batted her hands at the stars on the walls as if they were determined to harm her.

Rachel pretended not to notice. She was the only one still interested in the presents, and she stroked a large red ribbon in her hands as if it were a cat, keeping her back to us, watching out the window as the sun set on a new blanket of snow outside. She produced the camera Esperanza had been using before and took a picture of the window, the flash reflecting off the glass back into the room.

It took three nuns and Mr. M. to drag Mrs. M. upstairs to the nurse's cot, where she would sleep for the next two hours. Although she did not strike out at any of the nuns, she tried to hold her ground, pleading with them to let her stay. She said she would be a good girl; they wouldn't need to worry about her at all. The smeared makeup on her face almost made it seem as if she had just been playing dress-up and had gone too far, that now she would keep quiet and wouldn't need to be punished. Mr. M. grabbed her by the waist and tried to direct her out with as much decorum as possible,
but I could see his nails grinding into the flesh on her sides, his knuckles white with pressure.

“You see?” she screamed, turning her head violently in all directions to keep the attention that was hers. “You see? He's turned my own daughter against me.”

“Please excuse my wife,” Mr. M. said between kicking as discreetly as he could against the back of her shoes. “She isn't herself today.” His smile was stretched so tightly across his face it might have had a wire in it.

“This isn't his party. It's my party!” she cried and stomped on his shoes. Mr. M. grunted and clamped his arm securely around her waist.

“Louise!”

“It's my father's money that pays for all these things. So it's my party! My balloons! My streamers! My cake! Mine!”

Mother Superior motioned to two of the nuns to come over. They looked like ravens picking up a piece of meat. They made a wall behind Mrs. M. as she tried to retrace the steps the nuns forced her to take, pushing her body weight against theirs. She nearly managed to overpower them.

“You should love
me
!” she howled, turning back towards the girls, poking her head out of the elbows and hands pushing her forward. “Me! Not him! Me!”

The last thing Mrs. M. did before leaving the cafeteria was to claim two party favours from the table closest to the door. “Mine!” she yelled again, the yellow tongues rolling out limp between her fingers. Another flash went off. Rachel's face was pressed up against
the glass of the window. I thought I glimpsed Esperanza outside. I secretly hoped she was leaving the school for good.

Rachel finally opened her presents. A few minutes after Mr. M. and the nuns' return, the oppressive air lifted and the festivity resumed. Most of the girls forgot about Mrs. M. lying upstairs, forced out of the birthday party she had supplied. Attentions strayed back to bows and wrapping and the joy of opening presents: books and clothes, jewellery and paint sets, ornaments and treats. Rachel thanked each person, especially her father, who had bought her, through her mother's money, a new winter jacket and bright purple leather gloves, which she handed to me to caress. Besides Rachel's hair, they were the smoothest things I had ever felt on my hands. Rachel was like a princess holding court, her father, the king, presiding over all. The nuns, if they felt it at all extravagant, did not display their feelings. They watched over the proceedings with rare contentment. Sister Aline kept a list of each gift bearer, instructing Rachel to write thank-you notes to the girls and their parents. Mr. M. collected all the gifts in a large garbage bag to be taken upstairs to Rachel's room.

The outside courtyard lights now on, we ran back to our rooms to don our warmest jackets, wrap scarves around faces, and secure mittens on hands. We tumbled out the doors to enjoy the fresh snow of the new year. Girls in the grade just under ours built a lopsided fort in the corner of the lot, while Caroline and I rolled a snowball back and forth until we could no longer budge it, Francine and Rachel then joining our mission to make it as large as
possible. Mr. M. made snow angels with the girls, a few of them dumping snow into his collar. He got up, laughing and brushing himself off, then caught them in his arms in the twilight. A couple of the nuns perched on the grey stone steps leading up to the school entrance, chatting and drinking coffee, the steam from their cups rising into the air and evaporating like our frosty breath.